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Some of my favourites, might’ve been mentioned here:
Wisdom has been chasing you, but you’ve always been faster.
You have a unique way of contributing to the discussion without adding anything.
Context: I was Head of Department and one of the young officers aboard ship was not quite the brightest and unfortunately did not quite realize this. The young gentleman was attempting to supervise a working party of sailors under the eye of my Chief of Department and was making a royal mess of things. Before I could step in, the Chief took him aside and whispered a few things to him. The young gentleman left soon after.
I asked the chief what he said and the response was, “The young Sir makes excellent coffee. I told him that he should go enjoy a mug in the wardroom.”
Ever since then, when describing young officers that do not quite measure up, it’s always been “they make excellent coffee”.
Backhanded compliments like that can be fun.
I worked for a community college for a few years, and we had pretty high turnover in our department, and they had a rather strict ‘no rehire’ policy for people having worked there (so new people could come in and learn too), and it was always funny overhearing my manager explain that for everyone, but the positives he gave after were night and day. For good techs he’d tout their actual abilities, but for the trogs, they’d get something like good attendance or always on time. The sorts of answers that are technically true and a positive quality, but the person on the other end hears ‘this dude sucks and this is the best I can say about him’.
My favourite is Fritz Zwicky’s “spherical bastard” - someone who’s a bastard whichever way you look at them
Chris Hadfield, astronaut, says in his book that in space everyone is either a +1, a 0 or a -1.
Everyone should strive to be a +1, but mostly being a 0 is fine. Being a -1 is pretty terrible, a whole other person is needed just to get back to a stable state. Which is basically what the message above is getting at.
Some guys aren’t good at the work but are great moral support on the job. Some suck at the work and they don’t improve the vibe, they gotta go.
Morale guys are huge. I remember watching the Mets a season or two ago, they had Jesse Winker, okay but replaceable on the field, but absolutely a morale boost.
Back when I was in the Marines, we had guys who were just funny. Mediocre Marines, didn’t really pull their weight, but they got away with it because they could lighten the mood when we were all about ready to snap. To me, that’s important. That being said, they were also competent enough to not get themselves or others killed, which is probably the only thing more important than being funny. If you are incompetent you get to stay home.
Yup, gotta be good enough that they won’t turn the breaker on while you’re splicing the lights.
You can be a dick or you can suck, but you can’t do both.
I agree as far as workers are concerned. Bosses are almost always both.
This is one that you might hear early in a career, get good out of spite, and drop on an incompetent newbie of your own shortly before retiring. An insult handed down through generations of reformed shitty tradespeople.
Oh damn. I might integrate this into my lexicon.
