Bad Day

Well it was bound to happen, I had my first bad day at work. I have been here for 5 weeks without a bad day and I counted myself lucky. I had a terrible encounter with an engineer yesterday. While trying to understand his experiment, I suffered through a barrage of personal attacks. In retrospect I realized that I put up with the attacks for so long because in my previous job such attacks were normal. However that is one of the reasons I left academics, I no longer desired to be subjected to such behavior.

Previously when I encountered such behavior I felt alienated, alone and weak for not being able to defend myself or because I took such things personally. Yesterday after the attack, I informed my boss about the incident and told him I would no longer work on that project with that engineer. My boss was totally supportive of me. He apologized for the situation and totally agreed with me in all respects. He also was going to try to reprimand the engineer, but considering it was just the two of us in the meeting I am not sure how that is going to play out. I felt validated and supported, I know I made the right decision leaving academia. So my first bad day turned out okay.

The other good thing in my life is golf. I am serious. Yesterday I played in a shotgun start tournament. I improved my game by 8 strokes, for a total of 63 strokes in 9 holes. I know it is terrible but better than the last time I played. I hit one 225-yard drive, and it was straight too. Granted all my other drives were about 10 yards, but hey one out of nine is a start. The ladies association gave me all sorts of stuff too, just for participating. At the end of the tournament they served us dinner and there was women drinking beer! I made friends with the beer drinkers and will be golfing with them next week.