The Cold, Clingy Reminder

Pulling the nib of my technical pen across the vellum requires a steady hand that is currently being sabotaged by a damp sensation spreading through my left heel. I stepped in a puddle of spilled water in the kitchen exactly 15 minutes ago, and the cotton of my sock is now a cold, clingy reminder of my own clumsiness. It is a miserable feeling.

It is a distraction that sits beneath the surface of every line I draw, much like the way a manager’s disingenuous praise sits beneath the surface of the inevitable ‘but’ that follows it. I am currently illustrating a series of fragmented amphorae discovered in a 25-meter trench, and my manager has just walked away after delivering what he likely considers a ‘balanced performance review.’ He told me my stippling was ‘transcendent,’ then informed me that my last 5 plates were scientifically inaccurate due to a scale error, and finished by saying my workspace looks ‘very organized.’ I feel dizzy. I feel as though the ground has been removed, replaced with a layer of polite, corporate foam that offers no traction.

The Sedative and the Surgery

This specific method of communication-the feedback sandwich-is a ritualized form of cowardice. It assumes that the person on the receiving end is a fragile vase that will shatter if a hard truth is dropped without a layer of bubble wrap. As an archaeological illustrator, I deal in the tangible. If a shard is broken, it is broken. We do not glue a piece of silk to it and pretend it’s a scarf before we discuss the fracture.

Yet, in the modern office, we have decided that truth is too caustic to be served neat. We dilute it with 5 parts sugar and 1 part vinegar, then wonder why the recipient leaves the meeting feeling nauseated and confused. My manager’s comment about my ‘transcendent’ stippling wasn’t a compliment. It was a sedative. It was designed to numb the area before he performed the surgery of telling me I had wasted 45 hours of labor on incorrect scales. By the time he reached the second slice of bread-the comment about my organized desk-the first compliment had already been retroactively poisoned. I no longer believe he likes my stippling. I believe he used my stippling as a tool to make his own day easier by avoiding a difficult conversation.

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There is a specific kind of erosion that happens to trust when you realize that every nice thing said to you is merely a precursor to a critique. It creates a Pavlovian response.

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This isn’t just a management failing; it’s a cultural allergy to conflict that we have mislabeled as professionalism. We spend 85 percent of our energy trying to figure out how to say the thing, rather than just saying the thing. In the world of archaeological cataloging, precision is the only currency that matters. If a colleague tells me that my rendering of a Roman stylus is 5 millimeters off, I don’t need them to preface it with a comment about my choice of paper. I need the 5 millimeters. The ‘kindness’ of the sandwich actually delays my growth. It obscures the technical reality of the error in a fog of interpersonal management tactics. It makes me question the validity of every interaction. If the praise is just packaging, then the packaging is garbage, and I am left trying to salvage the truth from the bin.

The Absurdity of Unnecessary Buffering

I find myself thinking about how we handle information in other sectors of our lives. When you are looking for a specific tool, or perhaps browsing through the clear-cut specifications of a new device at Bomba.md, you are looking for directness. You want to know the price, the battery life, and the warranty.

You don’t want the salesperson to tell you that your shoes are lovely, then mention the phone doesn’t have a headphone jack, and then compliment your haircut. That would be absurd. It would be a waste of your time and an insult to your intelligence. Yet, we allow this absurdity to govern our professional growth. We have prioritized the comfort of the giver over the clarity of the receiver. My manager felt better after our meeting because he ‘gave positive feedback.’ I felt worse because I now have 15 plates to redraw and a lingering suspicion that my stippling actually sucks.

The Lie of the Blurred Line

Carlos G.H. once told me-well, he didn’t tell me, I read it in his notes on the 75th dig site near the coast-that a blurred line in a drawing is a lie. You either know where the edge of the stone is, or you don’t. If you don’t know, you leave it blank. You don’t smudge it to make it look ‘artistic.’

The feedback sandwich is the management equivalent of smudging the lines. It’s an attempt to hide the lack of a clear, honest boundary between what is working and what is failing. It creates a gray zone where the employee is never quite sure if they are a superstar or on the verge of being fired. This ambiguity is more stressful than the most brutal, direct criticism. If you tell me my work is ‘terrible,’ I can fix it. If you tell me it’s ‘amazing but terrible but also nice,’ I am paralyzed by the contradiction. I am left standing in my wet socks, unable to focus on the vellum because I am too busy replaying the conversation to find the hidden meanings.

Let’s look at the data, or at least the way data acts like a character in this drama. Suppose you have 15 employees. If you give all 15 of them the sandwich, you have successfully delivered 30 pieces of praise and 15 pieces of criticism. On paper, your ‘positivity ratio’ is 2:1. You look like a visionary leader. But in reality, you have created 15 people who are now suspicious of praise. You have effectively devalued your own currency.

Rock Solid Ground: Precision as Respect

I remember a specific instance during a dig in the mountains. We had 105 crates of pottery that needed to be cataloged in 5 days. The lead archeologist didn’t have time for sandwiches. He looked at my first drawing and said, ‘The perspective is skewed, the ink is too thick, and this wouldn’t pass a peer review in a 19th-century nursery.’ It stung for exactly 5 seconds. Then, I knew exactly what to fix. I spent the next 15 hours recalibrating my eyes and my hands. By the third day, my work was the gold standard for the project. There was no confusion. There was no resentment. I knew where I stood because the ground was made of solid rock, not corporate sponge.

We mistake ‘nice’ for ‘kind.’ It is nice to tell someone they did a great job before you tell them they failed. It is kind to give them the information they need to succeed without forcing them to navigate a psychological maze first.

The Act of Theft

My socks are still wet. I could go change them, but that would require walking past my manager’s office again, and I’m afraid he might tell me that my gait is ‘rhythmic’ before complaining about the squeak of my shoes and then praising my choice of trousers. It’s better to just sit here and feel the dampness. There is a certain honesty in discomfort.

There is a deep-seated fear of being the ‘bad guy’ in these scenarios. We want to be liked. But as Carlos G.H. noted in his 55th sketchbook, the goal of an illustrator-and by extension, a professional-is not to be liked, but to be accurate. Accuracy is a form of respect.

Building Bridges, Not Pretending They Are Clouds

If we want to build cultures that actually thrive, we need to abandon the culinary metaphors. We need to stop making sandwiches and start building bridges. Bridges are made of steel and concrete; they are rigid and honest about their load-bearing capacities. They don’t pretend to be clouds. I would much rather work in an environment where a ‘good job’ means exactly that, and a ‘this is wrong’ means exactly that.

The 35 minutes I spent over-analyzing my manager’s ‘transcendent’ comment could have been spent fixing the scale on my drawings. Instead, I am writing this, staring at a 5-centimeter ink smudge on my thumb and wondering why we have become so afraid of each other’s competence.