The Day I Swore I was Going to Die

Have you ever had the feeling that based on the situation you were in that you weren’t going to come out of it alive?

I did, although I did survive in order to relate my experience to you.

I was in a special assignment role, reporting to the Vice President of Operations. I had been the Director of Operations for the Arts Division, but the powers that be decided to roll our division into a larger one. The Vice President and all of the directors were all given new positions. Mine was to work on special projects for the company.

I had previously worked for the Operation’s VP, Terry, as the Manager of Project Engineering.

I reported to the Director of Engineering, but Terry worked directly with me, bypassing him. Terry had made a mistake hiring him, but his philosophy was to just ignore your mistakes and work around them. Not something I agree with, but I learned to live with it.

Terry and I had a good relationship. He trusted me to make plans and decisions and to take action on them. He told me, “I trust you, just don’t mess up and make me look bad. And if you do, I expect you to clean up any problems you may cause”.

All in all I did a really good job for him. Any errors on my part were small so I never made him look bad. And when I had a difficulty with…