“So how’s work been, Gary? Last time we talked you were having some problems with your boss.”
Charles was looking at him like this was some kind of test. Knowing his brother, it was.
“I didn’t say I was having problems with him, I said he was a problem.”
“In what way?”
“Pfft! You name it,” Gary said. “The guy’s a micromanager. He’ll bitch at you about not showing initiative, but anytime you do something without asking him how he wants it done you end up doing it again.”
“Does everyone have the same experience with him?”
“Yeah, he’s a real piece of work.”
“Are you sure about that?”
They had reached the point where Gary was about to find out whether he was right. Charles always came at you like this, and everyone hated it. In fact, the others were starting to listen in.
“Why do you ask, Charles?”
“No reason. Only that to hear you talk about it, it reminds me of that saying. Something like, ‘If everywhere you look there’s a problem, the problem is you.’”
Yep, that was it.
“Well what the hell do you know about it?”
“Now, boys, I don’t want that kind of talk when everyone’s here.” Their mother had said it calmly enough, but her face seemed meant to inform them she shouldn’t have to say it at all. Gary could only wonder whether she understood that Charles was goading him.
Charles said, “I just mean that I hear this a lot in my practice, people quick to blame others for their own unhappiness, unwilling to accept responsibility for their own shortcomings.”
“Again, what the hell do you know about it?”
“Boys—”
“I’ve been in manufacturing for over twenty years, Charles, and I remember when companies put their employees first. They respected people’s capabilities, and thought of them as assets. Now they seem to think that anyone can be trained to do any job, so when one gets all worn out and disgruntled from being mistreated they just replace him with someone too young to be jaded yet.”
“Boys!”
Charles said, “It sounds to me like you’d rather generalize when you’ve got some very specific problems. Did you get passed over for a promotion or something?”
Gary shook his head. This was just the kind of know-it-all bullshit his big brother brought to the party.
“I used to love my job, Charles. The exact job I have now. Then they decided to combine three departments so they could lay off half the office, and gave us a manager so clueless and nitpicky it takes us five times as long to do double the work. Can you imagine me sitting here telling you that you should only need to see a particular patient for three sessions, or ten, when you know you’ll probably be seeing them for a year?”
“I suppose—”
“Take it from me, not everyone who complains is just secretly hard to please.”
“Now, boys!”
Together, they said, “We love you, mom…”