Poetic License to Kill

I am so thankful for my get-a-rope posse of blog readers, but this is sort of a confession. I mentioned in my last post that a co-worker criticized my writing and that I was ready to shoot it out at high noon over the slight. I was so proud . . . all you guys sounded like real Texans, just like Willie sings in Beer for My Horses:

Grandpappy told my pappy: 'Back in my day, son,
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done.
Take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree,
Round up all of them bad boys, hang them high in the street'

And for that I'm thankful that I didn't identify my co-worker. I like him a lot and I'd hate to find him dangling from a blog noose with that 'what'd-I-say-and-who-are-those-guys' look on his face.

So, maybe I should clarify . . .

My co-worker is actually my boss, and we're close friends, to continue our Western saga, kind of like:

Butch and Sundance

And I did take a little bit of poetic license with my last blog, but reality was way too complicated.

The two days I described were very stressful, but my boss didn't actually criticize my writing. His frustrations just poured over onto my job about the same time that two (count 'em, two) of my projects found themselves:

Custered right in the middle of their own Little Big Horn

When the arrows started coming a little too close, I raised my white flag, unaware that my boss, too, was just about out of bullets; and I asked if we might be saved by his managerial cavalry. He replied with his best Tonto:

'What do you mean 'we,' paleface?'

Okay, he actually just held his head in his hands and mumbled, 'Maybe what they're saying is true.'

I take a HUGE amount of pride in my job because 1) I'm very good at what I do (at least one other person said so) and 2) I think I've made a difference in our firm (I think somebody else agreed).

So them were fightin' words!

But, being a good employee and loyal friend, I probably should've listened when my 'they're-taking-scalps' news pushed my boss under the Monday-morning cattle stampede. But it was much more satisfying to scratch out a guns-blazing blog in response to a perceived assault on MY work.

My boss and my peers and I are necessary-but-not-billable evils in an engineering firm . . . we are the Marketing Group. Marketing professionals and engineers are not from the same teepee, and for the four years since my boss and I arrived, we've fought off the Indians, most still pissed off about those earlier whiskey-selling-blanket-trading marketing people. And we've done a great job building credibility and trust, but sometimes, like the two days I described in my previous blog, we do feel a lot like Butch and Sundance:

In the movie's final death scene

But guess what . . . we get to keep our scalps. Our engineering Indians, who really aren't such bad guys (and girls), have a huge (HUGE) new contract, thanks in part to our little Marketing Group.

So, please, blog posse, don't hurt my boss. He's just trying to get some of those arrows out of his back.

In response to one of the comments to my last post, I do get paid to write, but kind of like those guys at the United Nations get paid to scribble something in English when the Prime Minister of Outer Zwenbornio gets up to speak. I translate our technical guys' a-thousand-multi-syllabic-words-are-as-good-as-one monologues into marketable qualifications and customer benefits.