Which Contracting Office is Responsible

[joel hoffman]

Ladybug, I'm sorry if I offended you. I tried following the thread at first. Then someone asked something about the contractor receiving the lumber, to which you seemed to agree. It wasn't till later that I was able to determine what actually happened. All over one mistyped word in your first post ("to" instead of "from" the vendor, which sold and delivered the lumber). Perhaps autocorrect changed your word?

[Guest Vern Edwards]

I can accept that and learn from it and move on. I'm a big girl and can adjust. I'm always open to learning from my mistakes. Please believe if I should ever brave the posting course again I will remember the lessons learned here.

If you really feel that you learned something from being criticized, then it is crucial that you post again, not just to ask questions, but also to comment and provide answers. Criticism, including harsh criticism, is fuels the drive to improve.

I think I write reasonably well, but it is not in my genes. If I write well it is because I had good contracting supervisors like Mr. C. Howard Kirk and Mr. Ron Hudson, who kicked my butt and made me write, rewrite, and rewrite again and again -- clauses, letters, memoranda, plans, you name it. After reviewing one of my solicitations, Mr. Kirk told me, "Get our ass out of my office and do not bring any trash like that in here again. I left his office like a round fired from a gun, and everyone in the office saw it. I was shaken by that, but not hurt or offended. My co-workers and I laughed about it later. But believe me -- I got better.

Maybe my Army service conditioned me to being harshly criticized, I don't know. (You don't know harsh until you've been angrily told off by your platoon sergeant in front of the whole platoon. And I'll bet those gals who just completed Ranger school were on the receiving end of some harsh criticisms.) Mr. Kirk's toughness did me a lot of good, because I redoubled my efforts to study and to write as clearly as possible, and it paid massive dividends. Mr. Kirk and Mr. Hudson are among my most revered teachers. He was looking out for me.

A friend of mine (and a sometime participant here) once had his file sprayed with "bullshit" spray and was told to get out. He was told that by the greatest contracting officer who ever lived -- a true legend -- Mr. Gordon Wade Rule, who was profiled in The New York Times and covered in The Washington Post. (Our Bob Antonio knew him.) My friend became a highly successful senior Navy contracting official. I'd give anything to have had a file trashed by Gordon Rule.

But we live in more genteel and sensitive times, and i would not tell someone to get their ass out of my office today. But criticism, what seems to us like harsh criticism, is how we improve our profession. Our profession is a mess. A MESS. Too many of us simply are not good at what we do. We've got to fix that. Thinking well and communicating our thoughts clearly is the most important thing we have to do. Wifcon Forum is an improvement lab.

You'll note that after you apologized for not being clear I said nothing other than to agree with you. It was only after more posts that said what you saw as being slammed. I don't think that I was rude to you. Note that in my criticism I attributed what I saw as defects in your posts to inadequate training of the workforce ( and perhaps to haste). I don't think the problems are just your problems. They are epidemic among us.

So have some guts and come back. Become a leading contributor. Don't be a wounded lurker. Even try arguing the wrong side of an issue, just for fun.

[ladybug108]

Joel, thank you. I would like to blame autocorrect, but I'm not sure it is the culprit :-).

Vern, I agree we are in a "nice" contracting world. It wasn't this way when I first started. I will not be a lurker. I will stick around to learn more. Thank you.