It’s natural that people are in love with their own ideas. Part of the problem is that they are our ideas. The notion is that, because it came from my head, it must be good. After all, garbage doesn’t come from my head. I have a good head.

I am a very lucky individual in the respect that I don’t suffer too much from the above phenomenon. People have been pointing out that I am stupid my whole life. I don’t have pretensions that I am intelligent. Sometimes I guess right with my ideas, and sometimes I guess wrong, and this is largely chance. It also helps that I am a complete failure in life, and I got to this fail state by ‘believing in myself’ and ‘going with my gut’. My gut is an idiot.

But I do enjoy watching conflicts between other people. My boss had the great idea to send a teacher to a social center to do some promotion. This was a good idea. The social center helps elderly members of the community, and my boss was hoping to soak up some of those government funds to keep these elderly folks entertained. So on the 7th of Feb off a teacher went to do a little mini lesson at this social center, so far so good. But my boss was also planning on sending another teacher a week later, Valentine’s day, to do a Valentine’s Day themed lesson.

Still seem like a good idea? It did initially to me. But then I got more information, and then I changed my mind.

See, the teacher we sent on the seventh was a part time teacher and a full time psychologist. She also saw the people at the social center first hand. And after the class on the 7th, she came back to us with a warning – that Valentine’s day themed lesson was a terrible fucking idea. What the hell are we going to do, ask some wrinkle-assed 90year old granny to write a love letter to her 20 year since deceased husband? Yup, not a great idea.

And thus, a conflict brewed. And I had the diplomacy seat.

The diplomacy seat is the chair between any pair of fighting individuals wherein you cannot be seen to take sides with either party. The teacher was my direct report, and a freelancer too boot. I can’t tell her what to do, as she can tell me to kick rocks. And let’s be real here, this person was right.

But my boss is my boss, and bosses are sensitive. Here, I need to bend him to reason, without offending those sensitivities I mentioned in the opening paragraph.