Entitlement - "You're not the boss of me" -

I have zero tolerance for folks who feel entitled. I also have no tolerance for folks who tell others how to do their job, particularly when they feel entitled to "advise" you.

I've been having a conflict at work - not my colleagues, but one a few separations away, who has been trying to tell me how to do my job, even though his experience, and his education, and his job, are very different from mine.

His entitlement comes from having a bigger title than mine, working for a more prominent hospital than mine, and having a few more years of chaplaining experience. And he thinks it is his role to teach me how to do my role.

Now, I would never, in a million years, even consider telling him how to do his job. Never! I'll take care of my own messes before jumping into someone else's, which makes it difficult for me to see why having my "buy-in" on his way of doing things, is so important.

In fact, he basically incited an email riot, getting more and more detailed, and then getting very very personal, sending the email to lower, middle, and upper management, stating my full name and my wrong-doings (saying 'no' to his way). I responded to the first two emails, while the riot was still a conversation, and then I stopped, sending only two more messages to my boss and my colleagues, not the entire freakin' group, apologizing for being the reason for the mud-slinging.

And come to find out, he said, "the cart came before the horses," but he was a little too quick with the "send" button, although he didn't claim any wrong-doing or over-reacting, or calling anyone names. In the meantime upper-management feels it is necessary to have him in on the decision-making process of my job, which isn't his job, and of which he has no experience! What?

Yet he's my colleague, and we'll have to interact, and how do I walk tall, look him in the eyes, and stand my ground (I've compromised so much I'm nearly ashamed of myself)? And this is eating me up, because see - I did no wrong, and I'm more than open to conversation and compromise, and yet there is no safe ground for which to do this.

Cover up? Pretend nothing happened? Surrender to win? And when can I get back to doing my job, which I'm damn good at, rather than sit in on another planning meeting, because what was, is not what is, because someone tampered with my educated and experienced and trained and backed-up program?

Where is my advocate, my champion, my voice? And do I care? God grant me the serenity -