I have a good friend, who I will call H. H is possibly the smartest person I know -- he has a bachelor's from A Very Prestigious University and a Master's and a Doctorate from an Even More Prestigious Institute of Technology. Immediately after getting his last degree he began working in finance, even though he is a scientist -- he does obscure financial modeling for some damn thing or another. He worked on Wall Street for a while, and then went into consulting, where he makes quite a good living.
The thing is, he hates it. He's always hated it. He's always wanted to crawl back into the academic womb and teach. Back when all this started I told him to work for a few years, make and bank his money, and
then go into academia. Money is, of course, not everything, and academic salaries prove this. Still, when you have expertise in a field that maybe three other people in the world know, expertise that people are willing to pay you >$200,000 year for, why not spend two or three years earning something to bank away against the day when you get paid about one fourth of that as an assistant professor? Especially when you still live like you're a starving student and could easily save most of it?
Yet years have passed and H is still doing modeling and still talking about the day when he will teach, and what he needs to do to make that happen and blah blah blah. I've been encouraging him for the last, oh, four years or so to just go ahead and teach already if that's what he wants, and as much as I love H, I admit I have been frustrated with his repeated statements about how much he hates what he's doing and how bad he wants to teach, and I have wondered why he doesn't just do it already, damn it.
Until this week. I think I know why. Somewhere, in the reptilian core of his brain, H knows he's in for what
I've been experiencing all goddamn week:
BIG, MASSIVE, HUGE, GINORMOUS, INFANTILE, OUTSIZE, SELFISH, PETULANT, PARANOID, SPACEPHXCK CRAZY, OPERATIC PERSONALITIES COUPLED WITH REPEATED HYSTERICAL, IMMATURE, UNPROFESSIONAL, HISTRIONIC, CHILDISH, EMOTIONAL, BABYISH, BATSH*T, BUGPHXCK, LUNATIC, WILDLY INAPPROPRIATE OVERREACTIONS TO NOTHING AT ALL!!!That's what he's in for, because that's what you get when you work in a place where people are
tenured and can't generally get their dumb asses fired, no matter how outrageous their behavior.
Seriously. This has been just about the worst work week I've had in my entire professional life. I will spare you all the details, mainly because they don't matter to anyone who isn't me, but it was just brutal. Brutal, aggravating, and, may I say, disappointing and incredibly frustrating because the principle actor in this drama is someone that I happen to like very much. Someone who has done a great deal for me. Someone who, until this week, had my loyalty until said person put me in a position where I had to choose between them and uh,
sanity.
And the truth of the situation. Now, I'm no more or less truthful than a lot of people, and not even the people who love me the most in this world would describe me as a latter-day
Norma Rae. I just want to do my work, get paid and go home. That's all. Still, there are times when even an avoidant personality like me must face a situation and call bullshit, which is what I was forced to do.
So now I am a disloyal bitch whose wings must be clipped, even though I, uh, technically don't really report to this individual. Of course, this clipping is coming in the form of theatrical sighs, and slamming of doors and stomping around (literally) and repeated requests to change this comma, no, a semi-colon, no, a comma!!! No,
not like THAT!!! THIS WAY!!! CHANGE IT TO A SEMI-COLON!!! WHY IS THERE A SEMI-COLON THERE?!?!? I TOLD YOU I WANTED A COMMA!!!All. Week. Long. And, somehow, the situation which precipitated this mess has morphed from the
Machiavellian actions of a bunch of other people to being ... all my fault. But not to worry. This Person has assured me, no,
promised me that Person will 'protect' me from the situation, despite my many faults. Because Person, as Person tells me I know full well, is the kind of person who just wants everyone to get along. And, despite my flaws, Person loves my work even if I am an abject failure in terms of getting along with my colleagues -- who, though it pains Person to say, are in need of protection from my feckless, heedless self. And even though I am woefully deficient when it comes to knowing when to use a comma or a semi-colon. Empires and grant applications have failed for less!
WTF?For those who are interested, and those who are not, I work at a university, but I am not tenured, nor will I ever be. I'm a staff scientist, not faculty and therefore, my only job security is the quality of my work. Which is the one good thing to come out of this week, the reassurance from people who actually matter in terms of keeping my job that they, and everyone else who had front row tickets (or even nosebleed seats) to this week's little Community Theatre production of
The Prince know full well what happened, who was at fault, and that no blame is being attached to me, either for the situation or the actions of said individual. That, in fact, my work is valued enough that a lot of things will be rearranged to enable me to work independently of this person, should I feel it necessary. It's my call.
This was very good to know. It is very easy, in an academic setting -- and in industry, to get in trouble merely by association with a troublemaker, even if you yourself are blameless. It is also the single biggest mistake anyone can make in their professional life to assume that they are irreplaceable. Everyone is replaceable -- even if the ship does in fact sink without you on it afterwards, it will not stop you from getting tossed overboard in the first place.
Unless you're tenured, that is.
Anyway, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it at this point. Unlike
some people I prefer to avoid acting from emotion wherever possible, so I said that I'd like to take a few days and let the situation diffuse a bit before I make any decisions. While this week sucked donkey balls, and while the general craziness has been escalating with Person for a while, I have a tremendous amount of respect and gratitude towards Person, and Person's feelings matter to me as does Person's professional standing which will be at least a little dinged if I metaphorically jump on my desk and yell
PHXCK THIS , YOU CRAZY PERSON, WHEN IT GETS SO BAD THAT I END UP HIDING IN A LADIES' ROOM IN ANOTHER BUILDING JUST TO GET AWAY FROM YOU AND YOUR NUTTINESS AND GO HOME CRYING EVERY DAY, I'M OUT OF HERE!!!!!!!!And, while I am not the smartest person in the world, and while I have more than my fair share of immaturity and character flaws even at an age where I shouldn't have them, I am reasonably certain that this situation and the underlying issues which triggered it will not be solved by a precipitous, emotional exit which would basically be just how Person would act. And we can't have that, can we? I mean, I guess we can't have that.
All positions have their Issues, and there is always That One Person (or Those People) at any job, and back in the day, I used to rail against those Issues and Those People. It wasn't Right, or Fair that Those People should be allowed to cause all these Issues! Someone should Do Something! It took me a long time -- much longer than it should have -- to realize that my bitching and moaning and gossiping and backbiting in these situations made me part of the problem. Not part of the solution.
But, time marches on and the tides crash against the shore day and night and wear you down to where you reach a point where you can be accepting and philosophical about most of these workplace dramas, and learn to avoid them where you can instead of gleefully jumping into them with your gums flapping and your arms waving. They come, they go, they come again but so does Friday and the world keeps spinning regardless of what happened at work today. You get to where you can put it in perspective and leave it all at work at the end of the day.
Except when you can't, when you go home crying like I've done every day this week. That's when the situation may be bigger than your ability to leave it behind, and where it may be time for a change.
Elle
