this far, no farther

Just to briefly summarise how I felt today, here are a couple of quotes...

Jean Luc Picard in First Contact...
We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!
Gandalf in Lord of the Rings...
You cannot pass! I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor. The dark fire will not avail you, Flame of Udun! Go back to the shadow. You shall not pass!
You work with people, you explain things to them, you discuss approaches to things and best practice... and they agree...

And then suddenly they come at you from out of nowhere and cobble together a giant piece of crap from all the ideas that have already been rejected and propose it as the way forward.

So you spend a goodly portion of the day writing something that may make no sense but hopefully may have some kind of impact...

Or you give people every opportunity to do things for themselves, and at every turn they take advantage of your generosity and cry poor... and The Powers That Be let them... repeatedly... just because they offer to pay for the privilege of having you do something that is their responsibility.

And just once you would like to repeat those two quotes to them...

This far, no farther... you shall not pass... But it would be nice if I had some backup.

Current Mood:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"And then suddenly they come at you from out of nowhere and cobble together a giant piece of crap from all the ideas that have already been rejected and propose it as the way forward."

I think I work with those people, too!