Deaf ears

I'm having a moment of being the tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear me. I'm impossibly frustrated with a person at work -- outside of our organization, ostensibly a "partner" -- who just refuses to play nicely with others.

Every time I work with him, he pulls the same crap: we agree to a particular plan of action, with specific boundaries and expectations, and we all feel satisfied that we're on the same page and things are going swimmingly. And then, without fail, he goes and does whatever the hell he wants to do, discussions and agreements and mutual respect be damned.

Minnams has worked with this guy, too, and knows my pain all too well; she just popped into my office as I was firing off an irate email to him, reminding him that he was not abiding by the ground rules we'd laid out last week. So I vented to her about what a pain in the ass he is, and how typical, and I'm telling him he can't pull this crap anymore.

And Minnams just sort of stared at me, a faint smirk playing on her lips and I said, "I know, I know. It's not going to change anything. But can't I just send it to make myself feel better?"

But, as usual, Minnams is probably right: it wouldn't make me feel better. I'd get a hollow "mea culpa" and a false promise that he'll do the right thing from here on out, and then he'd again just go ahead and do whatever he wants, and I'd get mad all over again. And as long as my boss and my boss's boss keep wanting to work with him and as long as it's politically beneficial to keep this guy around, he'll keep doing it, and my mid-level ass isn't gonna be able to do anything about it but post a rant on the Internet. Which has been surprisingly cathartic, but the whole situation still makes me cranky.