FWD: Challenging and oppressive SME situation

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

Name withheld upon request. Please reply on list.

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Here's the background: I've been doing tech writing for over ten
years now. I've done lots and lots of stuff, and I am good. I'm fast,
I'm accurate, and I writing's second nature to me. Throughout my
career, though, I've always had initial problems with impressions.
I'm in my mid-thirties but I'm fairly frequently mistaken for a
teenager. Usually, this is just by liquor store clerks and boy
teenagers. The people I work with generally figure that I'm a
grown up, so it's not a big deal, really.

I work in a casual environment, so wearing a suit and stuff would be
just plain weird, and it's just not me anyway. I don't believe in
taking such a huge hunk of my life and trying to shape others'
impressions of who I am. I don't take my work THAT seriously. I just
like to come to work and work. Politics is anathema to me, and I have
no interest at all in pandering to the politicians among us.

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 a good ten years younger than
me, but makes it a point to ask me, time and time again, in front of
other people, if this is my first job out of college. She
recommended, in an email CC:ed to probably twenty people I've never
heard of in my life, that I might be interested in taking some basic
computer literacy classes that are being offered nearby. She was
supposed to be my sole contact for the project I'm currently working
on, and she has intentionally and maliciously left huge things out of
the information she's given me. 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." Fortunately, I'd had an
inkling of what she was like and had had the secretary make a copy of
her edits, so when I was called on the carpet for ignoring the
information I'd been given, I was able to produce a copy of the
incomplete edits I'd gotten from her. One would imagine the axe would
fall at this point. This is completely beyond my ken, but it did not.
Frankly, I would have fired this woman right then and there. But they
didn't. And I'm *still* supposed to be working with her. I should
also add that this project is just a matter of being in the wrong
place at the wrong time for me. It's completely out of my range of
expertise, but it really needed to be done and I happened to be
available. This should have been a small thing, but it has grown. I
have tried very hard to just smile and finish this thing up, but this
SME has given me so much bad information that I've ended up rewriting
the whole stupid book at least three times, and that's just so far.
Right now, I'm in a situation where I am pretty much going to be
working round the clock for the next couple of weeks, just to get
this project out the door. (Never mind that I have several freelance
projects due next week.)

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. My
boss is very hands off. When I was hired, he told me that, as long as
things were going OK with me, he didn't need to know what I was
doing. He said he was here to help me deal with problems. Well, I
took him at his word. When things are going OK, I leave him alone.
Aside from the occasional shucking and jiving in the hall, he doesn't
hear a word from me. Maybe I'm being a little paranoid here, but I'm
getting the impression now that he thinks I'm a whiner because the
only times I've talked to him about my projects have been when I'm
having problems. Now I have another problem that I need to talk to
him about, I suppose.

I do like this company, overall, and I really need the security of a
regular job right now. I have a lot of people to support and my child
may need surgery sometime soon. As much as I'd like to just up and
quit, I can't do that until things calm down a little. My tendency is
to just grin and bear this until my life stabilizes a bit, but I'm
literally getting sick. Several people on this project have already
been hospitalized (heart attacks and nervous conditions), and I'm
starting to see why.

Here's the thing: I need to make this situation workable, at least
for the time being. I hesitate to talk to my boss, but I have to. I
need to make some demands. I don't know what to say, though. I need
to know that he understands that he's not using me to his best
advantage. I need a way to tell him in no uncertain terms that things
must change, but I need to do it without upsetting him too much. I
think that a lot of what I need to tell him goes back to the fact
that, because he's pretty hands off, workwise, he still sees me as
sort of a kid. Most of the time I talk to him, we're just telling
puerile jokes and being goofy.

I'm just not sure how to approach this situation right now. I'm
really muddled. I know I need to do an autopsy of this project. I
have a file on this demonSME, and I plan to call a meeting with my
boss and her boss to go through this big ugly mess and clear some
things up. Frankly, I've been too busy to address all of these issues
as they come up. But I don't know. Am I better off just leaving this
alone and keeping my mouth shut until I'm in a position to take
another job?


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