What a Week!

I have a co-worker who has been speaking to us in analogy all week. I (and the rest of my team) have been compared to both an untrustably incompetent Home Teacher and a crumbling stone block in the foundation of the Salt Lake Temple from when it was first under construction in the 1800's. I don't know whether to laugh or be offended!

First the Home Teacher analogy... The Home Teachers' job is to visit each family in the Ward and report back to the Bishop if there are problems or unmet needs in the home so they can be addressed. The inference here is that Karl* and I aren't keeping close enough tabs on the set up clerks and raising and correcting issues so at some point the whole system will blow up.

Now for the stone foundation analogy... It is true that the original foundation blocks for the Salt Lake Temple were cut from limestone (?) and cracked under the weight of the granite stacked on top to begin the outside walls. The lighter softer rock just wasn't strong enough to bear the weight of the granite. Those 1870-ish era workers had the grueling job of digging them up and starting over with a stronger granite foundation. It is important to the overall endurance and stability of the structure to have an adequate foundation. Again the inference is that we are all idiots compared to her intelligence, expertise and experience.

Now I have an observation... the person making these thinly veiled criticisms is the one who was sent to teach us. We just can't follow her logic because it flip flops from time to time and there's nothing to quantify why you do it one way this time and under the same set of circumstances do something entirely different next time. It goes round and round and round - sometimes I just feel dizzy. And I didn't even get started on how it's not necessarily the best way to do something just because that's how it's been done for 20 years...

*Karl is not my supervisor's real name. But since I don't know who's reading this I changed the name to protect the innocent. (Always wanted to say that - thanks for the indulgence!)