2-Dimensional

At the temp job I was working on Friday, the Office Manager gave me an assignment: using the normal receptionist's - excuse me, the Director of First Impression's* email account, I was to send out a proof of all of the new business cards about to be ordered for all of the real estate agents.  Now, my direct supervisor (whose title I don't recall) had already given me an assignment, but the Office Manager was her boss, so his assignment got the priority.

After some trouble logging-on to the email account, the Office Manager pulled up the website where all of the proofs were displayed.  Trying to show my eagerness to be of service, I offered to write a draft of the email with the condition that he would get to make any changes to it before I sent it out.  His response?  "No, I'm going to do it; I want to make sure it's done right."

Now, I'm guessing that this guy doesn't know that I've spent years working on my communication skills, particularly when it comes to writing - I mean, I was just a temp after all.  Even so, that's still so condescending that I practically had to check to make sure that I wasn't in a cartoon.  And the best part is that the email he wrote was woefully vague: he only gave instructions for what to do if the proof was correct, but no instructions on what to do if changes needed to be made.  However, having been so rudely rejected, I was not about to point out his flaws, so I copy-and-pasted his words for each email I sent out.  Sure enough, emails came flooding in from the agents with questions on how to correct errors on their business card proofs.

I've shared this experience with a few people already and everybody is pretty shocked that another actual human being could act like such pompous jerk.  I just laughed it off, seeing his failure as self-inflicted.  The worst part is that I'm sure that he has no idea what he did was even rude.  Oh well, at least I was just a temp and won't have to deal with this kind of buffoonery on a regular basis.

*This is a clear case of "job title inflation," like how employees at Subway are called "Sandwich Artists." At this rate, pretty soon a cashier at grocery stores will be called "Associate Director of Sales."