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Standards, procedures, conformity, traditions only matter if you believe in them and eventually see the need for them.

How is it that so many of us born of earlier generations, though not all of us, accepted the right way to do things without it having to be explained to us?

I say some of us because I had an employee, a former Marine actually, who could not, would not conform to protocol or standards. He saw his work product as his personal art and not something that needed to be understood by others or representative of the organization. He saw absolutely no need to organize his writing and instead wrote in the same disjointed phrases he used in conversation. Insisting that so long as he understood what he was saying or writing was all that was necessary. At the same time implying that anyone who did not understand him was ignorant. He was defiant of compliance. Smart guy but not smarter than all the rest of us. I never understood him.

Years later I was gratified that he supervised someone, also a former Marine, who was actually worse in similar traits than he himself was and who I hear also eventually torpedoed him and took his job.

Karma is a bitch.