Urdu and Pig Latin

I'm a good person to work with. People want me on their committees and projects and boards. You would want me on your committees and projects and boards. I'm a clear thinker, a good problem solver, and an excellent memo-writer. I do what I say I'm going to do and I do it on time. I can figure out who needs to be flattered, who needs to be cut off, and how to make you think you came up with the solution that is actually the opposite of what you thought you wanted. I've even been known to bring cookies to meetings, homemade ones.

I do have two significant flaws, however. One is that I talk too much. I'm working on that one, and my tendency to over-talk is somewhat balanced by the fact that I am also a good listener. The other problem is proving more intractable. There are some people, really just a few, in fact I can only think of three, who I simply cannot work with. I try and I try, I bite my tongue, I resolve to just get along, but inevitably, once I get into this situation, sparks fly and heads butt, no matter what I do.

Right now I'm working on a quite big, quite important project with one of these people (another has been out of my life for ten years, and I have successfully minimized working contact and achieved collegial cordiality with the third).

I must resort to metaphor to describe how this person and I interact. Forget Mars and Venus: he is on Pluto and I live in a completely different solar system. He speaks Urdu and I speak Pig Latin. I will look out the window, see a black sky, driving rain, and trees bent double by the wind, and I will say, "My, that's quite a storm." He will look out the exact same window at the exact same time and he will say, "Oh, what a beautiful sunny day."

I'm full of self-doubt. When he says that it's a sunny day, I figure I must be missing something, I must be looking from a bad angle, there's no way he could be so wrong, so maybe he's right and I'm wrong. Then I look out the window to check, and there are the exact same rain and clouds and wind (remember, this is a metaphor).

Then there are the times, non-metaphorical, when we will be in a meeting discussing how to solve a problem. There will be general consensus for Solution A. He will suggest Solution B, which is obviously not the way to go. I will try to restrain myself, but eventually, to move the discussion forward, I will need to point out why Solution B is not the way to go. Everyone will agree, and we will leave the meeting decided upon Solution A. The next day, we will receive an email from him asking how we are going to proceed on Solution B. Or, worse, he will unilaterally take a step that starts us on the path to Solution B, and not even realize he has done it.

It's driving me nuts. Basically, when it comes down to it, at heart, to tell the truth, I think he's an idiot. S thinks he's a blithering idiot and should be fired. But that's not going to happen, and I'm going to have to deal with him for a long time.

Maybe I should take up yoga again. Or Thorazine. Something. Because banging out irate responses to his emails is going to break a finger one of these days. And trying to hold rational conversations with him might burst a blood vessel.

I'm trying. I'm really, really trying. I want to be a good, patient, responsive, supportive person. But mainly I just want to rip his face off and stamp on it--oh my god, did I really just write that? I don't want to do that at all. I just want him to GO AWAY.