FWD: Re: Challenging and oppressive ...

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

Name withheld upon request. Please reply on list.

*************************************************

> -----Original Message-----
> Name withheld upon request. Please reply on list.
...
> My current position is awful, though. I am working with a SME who has
> made it her life goal to discredit me. I honestly don't know what her
> problem is, and I no longer care.

>... She's ignored my schedules, she's
> tried to sabotage me by giving me a "full edit" of my book, taking
> back her originals, ADDING INFORMATION AFTER SHE'D TAKEN IT BACK,
> then going to her and my boss and saying, "Wow, look. I gave her all
> these edits, and she didn't do these ones."
...
> The thing is, I'll do this. I'll pull off a heroic effort and I will
> finish this project, but now we come back to my 'image' problem.

No, you won't. You'll pull the heroic effort and get torpedoed.

Take care of the conflict NOW. Any work with a hostile SME and no backup is
a complete waste of time.

My best guess is that your only chance is a long, hard, ugly, serious talk
with your boss. One that has a significant risk of upsetting the apple cart.
Your boss needs to know about the problem.

I think you need to back away from the project, so that it's success or
failure (and with the situation you describe, failure is extremely likely
regardless of your efforts. Know your place - a project that is putting
people in the hospital isn't going to live or die by the efforts of a lowly
tech writer.) is not your life or death. I've been there (and I had a kid up
for open-heart surgery at the time). It feels like this is the defining
challenge of your life, and dying for the cause would be a small thing.
Consider, as coldly as possible, what will happen, to you and to the
company, if the document isn't completed, or if it's completed by someone
else. I don't know all the facts, but I suspect that the exercise will leave
you less frantic and more efficient. In my case, I ended up in a completely
different position at the same company, my SME (equivalent-I wasn't a writer
at the time. In fact, the new position was my first tech writing job.) ended
up getting a nice room at a local in-patient facility, and  the project was
abandoned. The surgery was cancelled due to improving conditions, and the
kid is fine now.

You need to have that meeting with your her, your boss, and her boss. But
that's probably not the first meeting you need - you and your boss need to
be on the same page going in. (gahk - I can't believe I wrote that.) And you
need to get working on it now. You may be too busy, but all your work
between now and that meeting is just spinning your wheels. There is a very
good chance it will be thrown away.

One fall-back position that might work is to get you off the project, and
back to your usual work. Is there someone else who could "just be
available?" Somebody that the SME has less malice toward? Somebody who
enjoys politics? Can you let her have the Pyrric victory of driving you off
the project?

The worst that can happen at the meeting is that you get fired. But I see
that happening anyway if you don't get this  resolved.


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