David is the new manager who is replacing the Buffoon. He was already a manager at a different branch, but now has the misfortune of being transferred to our hell hole. Notwithstanding the location, he should actually feel pretty good about his new assignment, given the fact that it would be nearly impossible for him to perform worse than his predecessor.
On the day Pee-wee brought him over for his initial introduction, David entered the building first, with a hurried, assertive walk several steps ahead of Pee-wee. If you didn’t know any better, you would not have known the two of them were even together. He moved swiftly, as if he were late for something, with his chest out and chin held high. But then, after getting half-way into the lobby, he paused, circled around 180 degrees and waited for Pee-wee. It was an awkward little display which I assumed was intended to project an air of confidence as he made his grand entrance. Unfortunately for David, that plan backfired almost immediately and only confused the five of us who were watching him. It was easy to recognize what he had just done as it was something we have all done at some time or another. When venturing outside our comfort zone, our first instinct is usually to act like we know what we are doing, which then typically leads to us doing something stupid. That’s what David had just done and the transparency of his odd little maneuver revealed how nervous he truly was.
Pee-wee went on to introduce our new leader who then offered the cliché comments about how happy he was to be here and how excited he was to get to know each one of us. It was clear that he meant neither of these statements. His body language and general demeanor expressed the rare combination of elitism and fragility which said at the same time both, “I believe I am very smart and therefore I know the best way to act and ‘put on’ around you people” and “I’m insecure and am struggling to conceal my low self-confidence”.
As I said, I didn’t like him, that much was clear. However, from there my opinion of him drifted to pity and quasi-acceptance. This was due to my one-on-one meeting with him later in the afternoon. He actually met with everyone individually. It was a solid gesture, one of the many things he did the “right” way. He knew how he was supposed to act and what he was supposed to do, given his position. He was the manager, so he was supposed to try to get to know each of us, he was supposed to be excited, he was supposed to be motivating. The problem was that his efforts fell just shy of believable. His words hardly mattered. It was clear he was upset about his transfer, that he didn’t want to be here and that he didn’t enjoy putting on this facade. But still, he knew what he was supposed to do.
In our meeting, David told me a little about himself. He was married and had a sizable family, which was a bit surprising given his relatively young age. He’d also been a branch manager for more than ten years and had worked for several of the larger banks in town. Incorporated into his story were small comments about his education and experience which had the thinly veiled purpose of conveying that he was intelligent, or at least more intelligent than his other branch managing peers. That’s what I found puzzling about David. He couldn’t speak more than a paragraph without doing or saying something off-putting. He was fairly normal and would be engaging through several exchanges of dialogue, but would then either interrupt you or say something bragadocious and tarnish all the good will he had just collected in his previous few sentences. As he continually repeated this pattern, it became obvious that he was craving some degree of respect or recognition. About half way through our meeting, I set my half of the conversation on auto-pilot and devoted the majority of my concentration towards conjuring up an imagine of the last decade of David’s life.
Based on his age and years of experience, he must have gotten a banking position similar to mine right out of college. Most young 20-somethings give little thought to their first job and I imagine he’d been no different. He had probably done reasonably well during those first few years, although I’m sure he only viewed it as a job, never thinking of it as a career. From there, he had become a manager rather quickly and while it wasn’t his life’s ambition, things could certainly have been worse. Besides, he had married young and most likely had a child by that point, and thus had the additional stress and concerns that come with those two elements. Over the next few years, his family grew on nearly a biannual basis, leaving him little time to pull his head out of the sand and think, “What am I doing with my life?”. Before he knew it, he woke up 13 years into a career he’d always felt ‘okay with’ at best. While he didn’t hate it, he certainly didn’t love it, and while that hadn’t bothered him in the past, it now, with every passing year and each new grey hair, began to slowly dig away at him. He was well aware of the fact that he was stuck knee-deep in middle America and that he no longer had the luxury of taking a chance with his future. He had too many responsibilities and had invested too much time into this career. Starting over at something else wasn’t an option. Instead, his only choice was to make the best of the path he was on and speed towards the end as fast as possible. The only problem was that the “end” was quite a distance away and getting there involved working up through promotions to even more jobs he didn’t really want. He surely spent his commute time daydreaming about whatever the hell it was he had once dreamt of being and wondering how in the hell a smart guy like himself hadn’t found a different path. One that was more fulfilling or more glamorous or at least more lucrative. He knew he was above this and had known it for a long time. He could have done so many other things, but instead he was managing this bank branch, confined to retail hours, working Saturdays and haggling with 70-year-olds about over-draft charges on their checking accounts.
Maybe it’s not fair for me to size him up like that, given I’ve known him three hours. Maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe he is content with his position and finds something in it that will never exist for me. Maybe that is the case, but I wouldn’t bet on it. In fact, I think the most complimentary thing I can think of him is to believe I am right, as that would at least mean he has ambitions above this place. I hope that I am right, at least for his sake. Because if I’m wrong, then he’s worse than I thought.
wastedcrescendo.com 
Leave a comment