Good morning everyone. I hope you are having a fabulous week. We are having fun with HVAC this week. With the weather changing it seems we have some local insects who decided the external bits of our system were the perfect place to shelter. It did not bode well for them and now we have interesting clogs causing the system to shut down. Soon there will be someone to fix it. For now, thick sweatshirts, wool socks and space heaters are the way to go. Tomorrow things should be sorted, it is just a work in layers day today. With plenty of coffee and tea. So while it is brewing, lets keep the fingers warm by starting the morning writing prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
I am personally fond of the fall of a self-entitled egotist. This could be fun to play around with. I also like the character types.
Tuesday, December 9th: It was a judgement call.
“It was a judgement call,” Andre said.
Justin frowned. “And you made the wrong judgement. But I suppose there is no fixing it now.” He sneered and then turned stalking off to sulk.
Andre sighed. He knew as soon as he made the call it would be an issue but he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he had made another decision. He was asked to choose the top contenders for the award. He looked at the work with no names attached. There were no specific indicators of who submitted what project.
Still, he knew Justin. He knew his work. He could tell which was Justin’s project at first glance. He was certain Justin expected him to recognize the work and who submitted it, granting him the award with no thought.
‘Except that his work is always sloppy and only half thought through.’ Andre thought.
That had always been Justin’s problem. He had great ideas and came up with occasionally brilliant notions. And he had always been praised for them. However, he lacked focus. He would start off with the idea, then build a team. They would see the brilliance of his idea and once they accepted the idea for the group project, he would pass off all the work to them. Then when it was time to present, he would present a charismatic and well-worded presentation, taking all the credit.
It had worked well for him over the years.
It was also why quite a few people refused to work with him any more despite his brilliant ideas.
This award was given only to solo projects. Justin always believed he was the one who made the project. He didn’t just accept the credit for the project, he genuinely didn’t think any of the work others put into his general idea mattered. He came up with the idea and therefore anything that followed was down to him. Regardless of who put in the work.
Because he relied on the work of others to see his ideas through, he never really learned to do the work himself. It showed in his project. The idea was a good one, not excellent, but good. Solid. The work that followed was vague, slipshod and the project a failure because it was never really completed.
‘And there were better ideas,’ Andre thought. He claimed it was a judgement call, but Justin’s good idea wasn’t even in the top ten. It was a good idea amidst several brilliant ones.
‘And those projects were fully realized.’
Andre sighed. Justin was likely to make things difficult for him. He was so accustomed to constant praise that any setbacks were viewed as personal attacks and he tended to react aggressively. ‘And that’s before he sees the list of top candidates.’
Andre knew it would be worse once he did. Several of the people who made the top list, three out of the five in fact, worked with Justin on various projects before. Because he took the credit for all their work, each of the three vowed never to work with him again. For this solo project they each came up with better ideas and saw them through in a professional and exemplary fashion.
Justin was accustomed to looking at them as nobodies. The supporting cast who stood behind him, riding his coat tails to success. Having them surpass him was not going to go down well.
Andre stared after Justin and decided that perhaps some time away might not be a bad idea. ‘At least until the dust settles.’
Ten til Midnight 