Hello Ward,

On 24 Apr 14 16:10, Ward Dossche wrote to Nicholas Boel:

 NB>> Was that employment short lived from that day forward? Or were you
 NB>> actually respected more for saying that?

 WD> He hated my guts but working for a state-owned company I was a civil
 WD> servant with 30 years of perks and he was a hired hand. I politely
 WD> told him he knew nothing of the business.

Was he by chance short? I happen to have a short boss (good friend of mine for 
about 15 years now, but have only worked for him for about 3 years), and for 
some reason he always has to have the biggest, baddest, best setup truck at the 
company (construction trucks with tool boxes, welders, gang boxes, torch 
bottles, etc) even though he hardly ever works in the field. :D

Sometimes I call him Napoleon.

Today he called a rain day and had everyone stay home. It stopped raining at 
about 7:30am and has been sunny the rest of the day so far. It's a good thing 
he's an ironworker and not a meteorologist. :)

 WD> Civil servants cannot get fired that easily, I don't know in the US
 WD> but I did my job correct and there was no legal ground to discontinue
 WD> my employment.

Sorry, I wouldn't know. I have never and most likely will never have a 
government job, unless I'm building their office.

 WD> After that he tried to score me real bad during evaluation time, which
 WD> was forced upon the evaluator and the boss did approve the evaluation,
 WD> which was my appeal level. So I took it to the appeals board which can
 WD> overrule him and who is presided by a magistrate. After hearing the
 WD> appeal the magistrate, without voting rights, said to my boss:
 WD> "Anything like this you only encounter in plays by Dante".

Sounds like a weenie that was job scared to me, and you were top on his list of 
threats.

 WD> The appeals board composed by 3 people of the management and 3 union
 WD> people votes in secret and of course it was 3-3 which means 'no
 WD> decision".

 WD> Since it's a government owned and controlled company I am allowed to
 WD> take it to the Supreme Court, which I did. After 6 or 7 years of
 WD> proceedings the 5 Justices ruled unanimously in my favor completely
 WD> blasting the initial procedure, meaning the performance-evaluation as
 WD> well as the whole appeals procedure to smithereens and convicted my
 WD> company to pay all my legal costs, reinstitute my previous evaluation
 WD> levels with payment of all bonusses, salary increases and the lot. In
 WD> the meantime I was retired and that also influendced my retirment pay
 WD> in a positive way.

Hah, there's a nice retirement bonus with all that back pay coming in!

 WD> The company had to rewrite their staff-management procedures,
 WD> especially how one is being evaluated, and have it approved at
 WD> government level. "Intra Muros" there was so much
fall-out from that
 WD> case that the initial manager, the one from the "glass half
 WD> full/empty", was terminated.

Good. If he wouldn't have been so nasty he might still have a job.

 WD> I'm enjoying life ...

As you should be. You spent most of your life working. Now it's time to relax. 
:)

 NB>> .. but there are some people (bosses) out there that can be
 NB>> decent, ..

 WD> I was in charge of the internal networking division of the
 WD> phone-company at that time and had a team of some 400 people. There
 WD> was nothing that I asked them, that didn't get done. Never
"ordered",
 WD> always "asked". And when the going got rough, I was there
too ... one
 WD> Christmas night we had a major breakdown and I also went there at 3am.
 WD> Then went out and got breakfast for everybody.

Cool. As long as it's not something that people would start expecting and 
taking advantage of, it's great to get along with co-workers and bosses. Makes 
the day go by much faster, with more people in good moods.

 WD> The same I notice at my Montana scoutcamp every year ... 17yr old kids
 WD> coming to talk to me about letters of recommendation for college
 WD> applications while they don't ask it of other senior staff people.

It's nice to finally have a boss that has been a good friend for quite awhile. 
No reason to argue. Just show up on time and do the job the way you're expected 
to do it, and next thing you know you're enjoying a few beers after work, going 
to dinners and kids birthday parties and summer grill outs and whatnot. It 
makes the time of life spent working the grind much more easy to cope with.

 WD> Be nice to people, and they'll be nice to you. Even Roy Witt.

:)

Regards,
Nick

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