I Let Him Finish Yelling

One day, when I was managing a team of computer chip designers, my boss came to my cubicle. He was upset about something I had done. He was not screaming. He was loud, and he was not handling himself well.

The cubicle walls were about five feet tall. If you were sitting, you were hidden. If you were standing, people could see you. We were both standing. I remember heads popping up over the walls, like gophers, so they could see what was going on.

I knew why he was mad. I had told our main customer that the chip we were designing was going to be a lot bigger than the earlier estimate. Bigger meant more expensive. They did not like that. I had only recently been promoted into that job. The man I replaced was this same boss. He had been promoted. I had been moved into his old seat. The bad estimate was his. Once I was in the job, I saw the error and started telling the truth about it.

While he was talking, I did not defend myself. I did not interrupt. I did not grovel. I let him finish. In the middle of a sentence, he turned on his heel and walked off. He never came at me like that again. He did not even bring it up later. We ended up with a decent working relationship. I still do not fully know how that happened.

That response was new for me. Six months earlier, the same scene would have crushed me. Someone disapproving of me, even when I was doing the job correctly, used to tear me apart. I would have been a wreck in front of those gopher heads.

The change was not that I had become tougher. The change was that I had stopped trying to look perfect. For most of my adult life I had worked to keep an image in place: the person who is always right. That image was a lie. I made mistakes. When I saw them, I jumped through hoops to hide them. I even let other people take blame that was mostly mine. I did that because I thought the image was what kept me safe.

Standing there in the cubicle, I let the real person be seen. The imperfect one. At first that felt like dying. I was afraid people would look at the real me and decide I was defective. The dream of being viewed as amazing by everyone had to go.

Here is what actually happened. My anxiety dropped. I was no longer spending the week managing who saw a mistake. I could enjoy ordinary life more. And the people around me preferred the calmer, less impressive version of me to the jumpy fake one. That still surprises me. I thought the mask was what made me acceptable. It was what made me hard to be around.

In Luke chapter 21, in the story of Jesus speaking about the temple, the people are admiring a building that looked permanent. It was large. It was decorated so that the sun caught the stones from a long way off. Jesus tells them it is going to come down. That was an ugly thing to say in front of a beautiful building. He said it anyway.

Later in that same conversation he tells his followers not to prepare a defense for themselves when they are dragged in front of people who want to shame them. I used to think that sentence was only about courtrooms and persecution. It is also about the cubicle. If your whole life is a prepared defense, you will never hear the next true thing. You will only hear the threat to the image.

Sticking with what is true is better than protecting the image. That is true at work. It is true in a marriage. It is true in front of God. I am not talking about announcing other people’s sins in the break room. That is not truth. That is just ugly. I am talking about refusing to spend your strength hiding the fact that you are a limited human being.

If you would be destroyed by a loud boss even when you did the job right, the practice is not a better speech. The practice is to let one conversation finish without the cleanup crew. Do not interrupt. Do not throw someone else under the bus. Do not rush in afterward to repair what people saw. Let the imperfect person stay in the room.

The scolding is loud. The mask is heavier. People preferred the imperfect real one. I did not believe that until I stopped defending the fake one.

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.

Drawn from a homily first preached in 2022