What goes up, must come down [NOT 21/9/23]

21/9/23 bryanlsplinter 24

This evening’s NOT is inspired by this morning’s DOT, in a cyclical progression that is fitting for my theme.

We speculated about the motivations of hapless Rudy Giuliani, who has completely obliterated his public image as America’s Mayor to support a venal, ignorant, orange pile of dung with hair that would embarrass a yak. Herodotus tells us that while someone may be on top now, the turning wheel of fortune may very well take it all away. That’s certainly true in Rudy’s case. Herodotus goes on to encourage prudent decisions, since shit happens (I’m paraphrasing). Clearly Rudy did not read Herodotus.

Closer to home, the individual that got me fired from my last job and bragged about it was, in turn, fired, after a lengthy legal investigation spurred on by numerous complaints. Now, that doesn’t get my job back or even an apology, but the fact that the turning wheel caught up with her does make me feel warm inside.

What about you, Deadsplinterites? Who do you know that has fallen from grace, either deservedly or undeservedly? Was it the result of bad choices? Do share.

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24 Comments

  1. Yeah…me.  I fell from grace so hard it woke people miles away.  Then somehow, for some reason I do not understand, grace came back.  It can happen.

  2. Once long ago in a galaxy far away I had a department head with the name, no lie, Michael Scott who had his own fawning Dwight Schrute (but with a different name).

    This Michael Scott wasn’t quite as weird as the Michael Scott in The Office, but he was pretty incompetent and nearly as craven. And his “Dwight” was pretty much as useless, weird, and self important as the character in The Office.

    They got fired after a year or two. I guess to be fair the writing was on the wall the day they were elevated and they were set up to fail, but Michael Scott did everything he could to play the hand he was dealt in a way that maximized damage, and his “Dwight” was pointlessly dickish up until the point when people realized they could deliberately ignore what he said and there was nothing he could do about it.

    Needless to say the Veep above all of this was an incompetent mess too, but she was sleeping with the CEO and could do what she wanted. At least until he dumped her and married his secretary.  Ah, corporate governance at its best.

  4. Thanks Bryan!

    Can y’all do a better job supporting the DUAN & NOT? Holy shit. I might be too busy to be around much but c’mon people.

    • My whole household has Covid and I lost my sense of smell and taste. That’s my excuse. I will endeavor to meet my comment quota once it passes.

      • Unless you want me ranting about how we’ve hit peak family cabin fever today (Day 6 of Covid isolation). Everyone has been yelling and crying for the past twelve hours and I’m sure glad my neighbors are hard of hearing because I’ve been dropping all kinds of F-boms.

  5. …it’s a fair cop, guv

    …the DUAN is, well…there’s a rabbit hole aspect to it that had a tendency to cost me sleep I can’t afford to lose…but I’m not sure I have a good excuse for the general failure on the NOT front

  6. Karmic wheels…

    Oh yeah! That’s my thing. My sisters call me the Karmic Angel of Death (better than being known as a Karma Kameleon) because my uncanny timing showing up at my enemy’s figurative executions.

    The director who used to be my manager who along with my former supervisor tried to get me fired because

    a) I pointed out (in a gentle way) that my supervisor sucked as a leader and showed him how to get better (didn’t go well and I should have known better.)

    b) I made the critical process changes that made our production line break all production records and made the company about $300 million dollars over 2 years (they knew and didn’t want me to share any credit.)

    c) who tried to stab another manager of mine in the back, but I saved her ass (which I regretted later) because I knew where the data/bodies were buried and not only crushed their plans, but made them look really stupid (it also pissed him off when he found out who stopped his “plot” as if the short bus Machiavelli thought no one could see thru his bullshit plot.)

    It turns out he got “promoted” to run a project because of all the projects he did (well more taking credit for other people’s work including mine.)

    Anyway, he’s the author of one of the biggest clusterfucks in the company’s history (and got a 2nd chance and from what I hear it’s going just as “well.”) He looks like a cancer patient now as the stress of actually having to do the work and run a project is getting to him instead of his usual swooping in and claiming credit for other people’s work.  If he were 1/2 the person on his LinkedIn page then the motherfucker would have been successful.

    I knew it was going to be a clusterfuck when I saw him and his gang get hired to run this project. They collectively didn’t have the skills, knowledge or the acumen to make this project successful.

    I’m just sitting back and laughing my guts out.

    Someone else who stabbed me in the back just got divorced. He’s a fucking idiot because he thinks single dad life is going to be awesome, but I know the reality of single dad life. He’s going to be lucky to be living in a basement apartment while his wife (stay at home apparently) and kids are going to grab most of his money.

    He’s pretty much fucked financially.

  7. …as for the rise & fall thing…rudy might be an extreme case but there’s definitely a repeated deal where folks who get fêted for something that comes with privileges…take your pick…get to taking them for granted…get disconnected from “reality”…generally get various baselines skewed to a point that makes them basically horrible people…presumably it happens in slow increments but we tend to find out about in big step-change chunks

    …there’s even a bunch of aphorisms about it…”die a hero or live long enough to become the villain” is just “only the good die young” without the rose-tint

    …so I probably ought to be able to come up with a better milkshake duck example…but…recency bias & all…plus I guess scale, for want of a better term…might have to go with musk & his whole messianic delusions of grandeur deal?

    A Theory of Elon Musk’s Maniacal Drive [NYT]

    …no shortage of people willing to talk about him like he really is the messiah…but it seems like we’re at the part in the life of brian where they try to worship a sandal?

  8. Well, my personal favorite “fall” story has a fun new wrinkle:

    Trump Privately Frets He Could Be Headed to Prison

    Quote:

    Would he be sent to a “club fed” style prison — or a “bad” one? Would he have Secret Service protection? And what would they make him wear? Those are some of the questions Donald Trump is asking his lawyers as his many trials loom.

    Me:

    Honestly, the part about “what would I wear” convinces me this is true.

    • …I’ve been telling myself this is the sort of thing that’s been occupying his thoughts for ages…it…takes the edge off?

      …so I was comforted to see what I’d agree sounded like plausibly small-minded concerns appear to confirm that he is indeed a man who can feel the walls closing in & isn’t as sure as he’s used to being that he can get his tail out of the crack he stuck it in

      …personally I’d be fine with setting a precedent of busting him down to worse conditions than, say, reality winner…no more honorific…no more secret service…let him make friends on the inside…I’m sure the MAGA faithful will happily venmo funds to his commissary account

    • Mrs Butcher was telling me some reporter got Trump to admit he was responsible for 1/6. I believe it but I don’t believe it. Mostly because if it had happened it would have been the headline on every news outlet for a week. At the same time he’s just egotistical enough and stupid enough to totally own it on the record.

    • He tries to trash Pelosi in the media when she is (I trashed her successfully…so…) probably the strongest Speaker in US history whilst he is very clearly the weakest. Like…he can’t even get his majority to vote for a motion to simply debate the guaranteed vote that gets passed each year. It’s like watching someone get stuck in their own bear trap and step on a face-smashing rake at the same damn time.

      His quest for power is so OVER that he’d really be smarter to just make a deal with the dems and take his lumps so he can at least say, “in the end, I did the right thing.”

      That won’t happen, though…because his quench for power is way too thirsty.

    • Axios, of course, screws up the Dems in Disarray! GOP engaged in crafty process angle. It’s not just the “Democratic leaders” who have declared the House GOP DOA. It’s a big bloc of the GOP senators too. Ukraine funding is a big piece of that, but Axios doesn’t want to make GOP strategists uncomfortable by bringing that up, so, they’ll just keep it quiet.

      And as AOC has pointed out, McCarthy made his job so much harder by giving up pointlessly to the paranoid caucus and banning remote voting rules instituted for Covid safety, he wouldn’t be scrambling so hard for votes from reps in remote districts.

      • Axios is basically the WSJ’s editorial section in point form…merely with a twist of sour lemons that, if they make you squint enough, appear to be non-biased.

        • It’s absolutely got a right-wing slant, though it’s handled much more subtly than most of the outlets that do. That’s precisely why I read it. If they can’t spin something as a Republican triumph or clever strategem, then Republicans have seriously fucked up.

  10. Well, I went from a sterling annual review with a (pretty pathetic, all told) raise at my job a few weeks ago to having two unexcused absences in less than a week. The first time was when my Internet went down on Friday, and I was so preoccupied with trying to fix the router and, when that failed, trying to get proof of the outage that I completely forgot to call the attendance line until the service was back on. Fortunately, they let me go back to work, albeit without pay for the time that I had no connection. But today, I was due to work an extra hour and a half to make up for the court trip outstate on Tuesday, and I could’ve sworn it was tomorrow — even though I had my schedule open in one of the tabs on my other monitor almost the whole shift yesterday. When I got back from lunch, I was all set to sign in until I opened my e-mail and found an automated message that I wasn’t working today, and then my working hours shaded in black because of the unexcused exchange.

    So, yeah, it’s a black mark on my performance review, and if I get one more of these in six months, I could be fired. But even still, somehow I can’t help . . . just not giving a fuck.

    • I know this might sound cliche because it is…but it’ll all work out in the end.

  11. I had a psycho boss when I first started with the company 11 years ago. I lasted two years before transferring and I still hold the all time record for working under her. Most people were gone within a few months. Anyway, right when this major project I’m on gets going she emails me out of the blue asking if there are any open slots. I just played dumb and said “gee, just a worker bee here so I don’t know anything.”  Then immediately went to my senior director and said if she saw any inquiries from this person to absolutely not engage.
    A few weeks after that she just up and quit without another job in place. I don’t know what happened but I’d like to think her years of being an HR nightmare finally caught up to her.

    • I feel sorry for her and hate her at the same time. I don’t even know her*

      *HR people are insane…it’s a matter of time

       

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