The Place I Don't Want to Be

It was smoky in the restaurant--we were seated by the smoking section of a nice place near the airport, close to the hotel where I would drop him off shortly for the evening. His flight was first thing in the morning and we had arranged for a shuttle to come and get him. I felt like an adult babysitter. This is the reason that there are expense accounts and taxis and rental cars--so you don't end up inconveniencing your co-workers by expecting them to give you rides to the airport.

Communication is a funny thing. I remember one of my mentors claiming, certainly at a moment of conflict, that you aren't communicating unless a message is both sent and received--this definition came to mind all day as I sat there on the hook for this colleague visiting from out of town to take care of our problem. I told my partner that he needed to take care of an issue with a customer. Next thing I know, I'm ferrying people back and forth from the airport. I take care of my fair share of things, and then some. It bugs me to have crossed something off my list, only to have the burden for its completion put back on my shoulders.

As the guy shifted in his seat across from me, I was acutely aware that I needed to call home. I thought I had warned my wife that I may be late, but I wanted to be sure. I'm glad she expects me and wants me to be home early if possible--almost to the point of being irritated when I can't make it on time. And the kids would be asking for me--I'm the one who puts them to bed every night, saying no to the fourth request for another drink of water, saying their prayers, telling them stories. That is, except for the last three weeks out of four, as I've been traveling so much. If I wanted to be away from home at night, there are other jobs to be had--better paying jobs.

I excused myself and called home on my cell phone. I wanted to talk quickly and just make sure Fran knew what I was up to. Surprisingly, she did, and was fine with the schedule. She even offered to keep the kids up a little later for me so I could put them to bed. I promised to hurry. On my part, I tried to muffle the background sounds of music and loud talking and clanking dishes. I was about to sit down to a beautiful steak dinner, but there was no need to rub it in and risk her being hurt or jealous. Eating with colleagues is more like work than enjoyment. There are limited points of conversation. Typically, things that are too philosophical, political, or in any other way controversial are off-limits. If you end up with a weirdo or someone with ideological differences or someone in a crisis who wants to talk, the experience can be tedious.

I started thinking about my colleague who set me up for this job of shuttling our out-of-town visitor around. Was this innocent, of out necessity? Was this a set-up job? Was he laughing at me for having to do this? Why did he schedule this visitor for the two days that he was going to be unavailable? Was it merely an accident? He needed to be by this guy's side! He needed to learn from him. Is he shifting this responsibility back to me purposely, because he is challenging my authority to assign the responsibility in the first place? Does he just want nothing to do with this thusfar failed project? Should I confront him about it, or beat about the bush and try to flush out the answer.

My attention shifted back to my dinner companion. He is a nice enough guy. We've been working together for about nine months now, off and on. He's from New York originally, but has moved his family down south. He flies in to handle special project for me--he's not especially talented, but he's pretty smart--got a Ph.D and lots of experience. He's absolutely one of the worst people I've worked with in the field of dealing with interpersonal issues. Part of his problem is that he's got too much pride, to the point of arrogance. I've heard that people shouldn't be allowed to know their own IQ's, and I think it applies here. Almost like he goes around thinking, "I'm smarter than you--it's my job to convert you to my way of thinking..." Instead of perhaps listening to others and learning something, if nothing else, perhaps just their viewpoint. Even if you don't think the other party has a valid position, one of the best ways to get them to consider your point of view is to make sure they know that you've completely considered theirs.

After a couple of blown projects with this guy, I shared my theory of this guy's interpersonal flaws with another colleague who works with him. Later, I received reports about this guy having emotional meltdowns publicly in similarly stressful situations. Another case for the books: What you need is balance--the ability to deal with people and the intellect to solve problems. Too much of one without the other results in an irritating , dysfunctional individual.

So, smiling to myself a little, my main goal was to get this meal over with relatively quickly and get this guy back to the hotel feeling like he had been coddled while he was in town. That was one of my theories on getting good support from my co-workers from out-of-town. When we had a flurry of projects, I would take a couple of hours to pick them up from the airport, make arrangements for them to get shuttled around, take them out for lunch and dinner and even give a half-hour tour of the city as we drove to our destinations.

My goal was to make it easy for them to come to town to help me so they wouldn't mind the extra work. Maybe even look forward to coming to town to help me. And I wouldn't feel guilty asking for extra effort from them since I had gone through extra effort to bring them in and treat them right. This co-worker had been reassigned away from our territory, but was in town to help clean up a failed project--a customer who had been given a free instrument for a long period of time, but had never been trained on how to use it--today was the 7-hour training day, and it was decided that it would be better for this guy to finish the project that he started, rather than give the responsibility to the new guy. When I found out my partner had arranged to be out of town and that it was clear that I was expected to pick this guy up at the airport, I thought it would be too abrupt a change to yank the red carpet out from under him right away, so I relunctantly agreed.

We had shared stories about kids, and some basic work gossip and the events of the day, and were running out of topics. I knew from previous experience that there were some off-limits family subjects that would provoke an emotional response. I also knew that he would like nothing better than to engage me in a political debate if it came up--which I couldn't take. I decided to steer the conversation toward a hunting trip that a lot of our colleagues take together each September. I realized that my dinner companion is one of those people who has the annoying ability to turn anything fun into a mathematical formula, so I anticipated learning the muzzle velocity of a 30-06. Instead, he made a joke about the Vice President shooting someone during a hunting trip last year and asking about the weaponry on hand during the hunting trip.

I responded with a comment about a unique gun that one of my co-workers has--a double-barreled shotgun with side-by-side barrels.

Immediately, I could see that I had somehow touched a nerve. He stared over my right shoulder and was completely silent. I glanced behind me to make sure someone wasn't coming out of the kitchen with some sort of giant cleaver.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said, "I just had a bad experience with a double-barreled shotgun one time."

"What happened? Did you have a barrel burst on you or something?" I had heard of a case where an acorn had lodged in the barrel, causing it to explode when fired, sending shrapnel flying.

His eyes lost their stare and he focused right at me. His piercing look was slightly alarming--his face suddenly showed his age a little more clearly--definitely over 50, not a prematurely greying 40.

"No, I was just remembering a time where I found myself looking down the barrel of one of those guns, and it was a pretty awful experience," he said quietly.

"What?! When did this happen?" He just shook his head.

"It was pretty bad, Mike. I don't know if I want to..."he trailed off and he had the stare again.

I knew this guy well enough to know that this was absolutely true, but that it was quite likely that I wouldn't hear much more of this story if he decided to end it abruptly.

"Did the gun go off?" It was ambiguous enough, designed to get the story out of him.

"The good thing about those guns," he said slowly, almost mechanically, apparently not hearing my question, "is that you know there are only two shots. Once they're both fired, that's it. In this case, when they were finished, they hit me in the head with the stock. That's where I got this knot on my head." He pulled back his hair to show an area on his forehead. I couldn't tell if there was a knot or scar--I believed him, though.

"They shot at you?"

He smiled a slight, odd smile and shook his head yes.

"Were you hit?"

"Not me."

"Another person with you?"

He nodded.

"Did they make it?"

The stare again. He slowly shook his head...and said--"No. They didn't make it."

"What? What in the hell happened?"

"I was working for the government at the time." His eyes were red and I saw there were tears. Now, I knew I had pushed too much.

"Hey, I'm sorry. You know, we can talk about something else."

He nodded, eyes still red, a pained expression on his face as he said "Yeah. I would appreciate that."

Suddenly self-conscious that I had been interrogating this poor guy, I swiftly changed the subject to something benign and that's where it stayed for the next half-hour as we finished the transaction that was the remainder of our dinner. His telegraphic answers told me that was definitely off-limits, maybe to be finished another day. We made it to his hotel in relative silence, except for a brief call to his kids to say "good night."

We shook hands and he walked away, not looking back.