Iron City Blues
Dear Dr. Ding—
This week I contacted my boss about setting up a training for some of our staff, and he was supportive in an email saying to go for it. Now he is telling other staff not to come! I am very pissed and want to send him an email expressing my anger and frustration at his wishy washy attitude with this. I also want to inform him that I am not willing to travel to this training and have to train all of the staff at a later date one-on-one because there is no computer lab there. I also am not willing to field hundreds of calls from them asking how to run the fucking program because they didn’t bother to attend the training.
I know I can’t flame him because he is my boss and does have the final say but I really want to tell him he is being an asshole! He has now become part of the problem rather than part of the solution related to this whole fucking ordeal for me.
He also told us he wants us all to send him a written schedule every two weeks. I had a discussion with him a week about this. I told him I already put my schedule in our intranet’s calendar system and that he, all of my staff, and all the other supervisors have access to it. I don’t want to have yet another document on paper that can be handled by just using the technology we have. I despise doing the same work twice or more if it is not necessary.
I reminded him of this conversation at the meeting. His response was that it’s my job to inform him of my schedule and he shouldn’t have to go looking for it. He also said because no one else has bothered to learn how to use the schedule in this software we all have to do it hard copy.
I told him I was very frustrated because I brought this issue up over two years ago (before he started) and got the same response! And further, people still have not bothered to get familiar with the expensive technology purchased with public funds at our disposal. I don’t think he appreciated that comment.
From the time I got to corrections almost three years ago all I heard was bitching about needing more computers so all would have access to them. Now they spend all of this money to make sure we all have access and they refuse to use it. This is such a backward ass system I don’t know how much longer I can handle it. Technology can only make your job easier if you fucking use it. I feel like I have been and am wasting a huge amount of energy on a project that no one intends to utilize anyway! And it is a project he signed me up for in the first fucking place.
I could schedule a time to meet with him to discuss it but I don’t know if I could stay professional and appropriate at this point. What would Dr. Ding suggest?
Locked Up and Pissed Off!
Here’s the summary of what I’m about to say:
- 1) You work in corrections. The standards of technology usage will change in oh, say 100 years give or take a decade.
- 2) You’re more capable than your colleagues and staff. Waaay more capable.
- 3) You’re feeling trapped and extremely angry on a chronic basis.
- 4) Something radical has to change.
Let’s take #1: I don’t even have to tell you this, but for our gentle readers I’ll provide a little background. Corrections lags behind substance abuse treatment in terms of up-to-date technology usage. Substance abuse treatment in turn lags behind mental health, and then mental health lags behind the rest of the world. There is, at a minimum, a 10-year gap between these nodes, so if you do the math and assume that the rest of the world is about one year behind the cutting-edge stuff, we’re talking about at least a 31-year gap. Effectively, Locked Up, you’re trying to function in an environment that still thinks it’s 1975 and that The Fonz is a real groovy guy. You made an excellent point about the public funds at your disposal, but you and I both know that a public institution isn’t going to suddenly get tech savvy — instead they will do what they’ve always done, and get what’s always been gotten. So I’d bet on them. It’s just not likely to change in your lifetime no matter eloquently you flame your boss.
#2: You’re obviously far more comfortable with and capable of using computer technology than your compatriots there in ole Stony Lonesome. Even your boss is using a Flintstonesesque tablet and chisel, which therefore means you’re a space alien from The Future, and probably not to be trusted with your fancy silver jumpsuit and cathode ray tubes. This perception of you isn’t going to change, either. Are you sure you want to work in an environment where you’re that much more clever than your peeps? Is this lack of stimulation and forward motion leading to #3? Are you dying an agonizing, Shatneresque death as you attempt to get the mouthbreathers around you to suck air through their noses? Can I possibly make any more sci-fi references in this paragraph?
#3: In three years nothing substantive has changed and therefore nothing substantive is likely to change any time soon thanks to omnipresent organizational malaise. You sound angry and thwarted beyond words. You’re at a crossroads; your intense feelings are definitely telling you something important, trying to get your attention. Any ideas as to what’s going on here? Have you ever felt this way before in your life?
In a way, your situation really isn’t about staff training or your boss’ willful ignorance at all. It’s about you and why you’re putting up with being manipulated and taken for granted. My sense is that your boss may have tasked you with the training responsibilities is because he wanted to get credit somehow for having someone on his staff who could use the technology. You are the sacrificial lamb on the altar of bureaucratic politicking, Locked Up. No wonder you’re so pissed off! You have no real authority to affect change processes that were asked of you. Total bummer.
#4: Dr. Ding senses that right now it may be hard to see the big nasty existential forest for all the pesky situational trees you’re walking amidst. Taking the larger view of the situation…do you know why you do what you do? Why did you choose to work there, what were your expectations when you started, and how are they being fulfilled (or not)? What does your anger mean when taken in a larger context? Is it just that you have some control issues and just need to chill a la some New Edition lyrics, or is it telling you that something deeper is amiss here? It’s time for a life review.
A fundamental tradeoff between working in private v. public settings lurks ickily beneath your dilemma, sorta like that bald skinny fish-eating guy who always murmured “Precious….loves the Precious…” in the LOTR movies. In private settings one usually has far more control over scheduling or type of work taken on, and the income potential can be virtually limitless. However, things like benefits, retirement, and job security can be lacking. Conversely, working for federal or state agencies is great in terms of these latter three factors, but you may have less creative leeway, more scutwork, and far more bureaucratic entanglements with which to contend. There will be other differences of course, but these all usually boil down to some variant of a power v. no power dynamic in effect. Where is your power in this situation? It sounds like you don’t have a particularly collegial relationship with your boss, which makes communication tedious. Can you leverage anything? Can you threaten, albeit politely, to simply refuse to capitulate to his crazy-making demands or have him suffer the consequences of you leaving or transferring or quitting on the spot? What are your other options here?
Are you ok with not having much say-so? Are you content to take orders? Are these things worth it? Or is it that indeed, as you succinctly state, you simply work for an asshole? Only you can answer these questions.
Alternative to #4: You may want to consider learning to not give a shit. This is characterologically impossible for a lot of people and I don’t recommend this as a way of life, but it may help you preserve your well-being in the meantime. Generation Xers (I can only assume you are one of these) tend to place a tremendous amount of stock in job satisfaction that actually might be better placed elsewhere. While Dr. Ding never advocates being a Suzy Punchclock 24/7, it’s sometimes refreshingly liberating to just not really care a whole lot about whether or not your ideas are taken seriously, sort of like being pantsless. Aah. The feel of a cheap vinyl desk chair on the bare backside is the stuff of life! Consider reserving your passion, heat, and venom for things other than work. Think about beginning to look at your career as more separate from your actual life, and spend as little time thinking about work when you’re not actually doing it. Learn to regard it as a job versus a career and see if that approach improves anything for you. If you find this impossible, refer back to the life review stuff.
Here is your mission, Locked Up, should you choose to accept it. Sit down some evening when you’re not distracted or angry and answer the following questions.
~ Are you sure you want to work in an environment where no one else cares about the things you care about? Are you getting enough mental simulation? Are you dying an agonizing, Shatneresque death as you attempt to get the mouthbreathers around you to suck air through their noses?
~Are you ok with not having much say-so? Are you content to take orders? Are these things worth it? Or is it that indeed, as you succinctly state, you simply work for an asshole?
~ Any ideas as to what’s going on here? Have you ever felt this way before in your life?
~ Why do you do what you do, and why have you made the choices you’ve made? What does your anger signify?
~ What’s your leverage? Can you leave? What are your other options here?
Dr. Ding suspects you’re a really smart cookie who ended up in a jar of stale Nilla wafers. Mouthbreathing Nilla wafers who have silver jumpsuit envy. Being a raspberry in a can of pears can be very uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to be. You’re working in a paramilitary organizational structure where change isn’t decided by merit but by authority. It’s possible that this isn’t a very good fit for you. Become a Nilla wafer or find a can of raspberries. I’m going to go have a snack now myself because this whole discussion is making me hungry for some unfathomable reason.
Shakespeare –Julius Caesar (Cassius at I, iii)
How’s Your Riddler?
Comic Book Guy: These “Bat Pants” have been shredded by the Riddler.
Dry Cleaner Clerk: No, just your ass.
Comic Book Guy: That’s what I call my ass.
The Delicate Art of Self-Stifling
I’ve known my younger brother is gay for about the last year. I had suspected it since we were teenagers. We’re both in our mid-twenties now. My problem is that our parents don’t know because he doesn’t want to tell them. They are both really good people but I’m not sure they could handle this news if they heard it from anyone but my brother. Please advise me on how to get my brother to tell my parents.
Do you own an impressive arsenal of lethal weapons? Well, outside of using some type of physical force, you can’t get your brother to tell your parents. This whole thing issue is actually between your brother and your parents. You are obviously entitled to your feelings of botheration on this, but my dear, you have to stay out of this. It’s between your brother and them and that’s that.
That’s the short answer.
Your impulse to somehow shield or protect your parents is noble, but I think it’s misplaced. After all, you’ve suspected your brother is gay since your teen years. If you suspected, don’t you think it’s reasonable that your parents might harbor the same suspicions? You’re assuming that this will come as a total surprise to them. It might, if their level of denial about such things is pretty intact, but then again it might not be.
It sounds as if your brother has some sort of reason right now for not telling them, and it’s very important for the sake of your relationship with your brother that you respect his wishes on this. If you try to force the issue, you may drive a wedge between you that will prove really tough to later dislodge. He obviously trusts you, or else he wouldn’t have come out to you before other folks–don’t mess that up! If you break that trust, getting it back may prove impossible at worst, or extremely awkward and painful for both of you at best.
Now, in the meantime, please know that coming out is for many people a gradual thing, not something to be taken lightly, and timing is often of the essence. Your brother may be in fact be biding his time until your mother’s prize roses are all planted or your father’s sciatica is settled down before he tells them his news. It may well be best for him to not so much jump out of the closet but inch along comfortably. Put yourself in his position for a moment—it’s one thing to risk a siblings approval, but parental approval is pretty monumental for a lot of folks, especially during their early or mid-twenties when they are just beginning to get a grasp on who they are in the world.
To assist you in keeping your perspective: it’s not like he’s telling them that he’s something truly scary like a conservative fundamentalist Republican senator or a devotee of your local easy listening radio station. He simply thinks boys are neat. Unfortunately in our society this for some reason often necessitates a lifetime of discrimination and ostracization, not to mention victimization.
Something else to consider is that if indeed your parents respond negatively or hysterically to news of his sexual orientation, your brother is going to need a lot of support. If you snitch on him, you are probably going to remove his only familial support. My hope is that the two of you can discuss this stuff and be open and honest about your hopes, fears, and expectations, and also that you will effectively, in the immortal words of Archie Bunker, stifle yourself.
Dr. Ding agrees…
If you just set people in motion they’ll heal themselves.
~Gabrielle Roth
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
~Aeschylus
Orange Jumpsuits By Prada
Dear Dr. Ding (if that IS your real name):
I have a problem. I have a good friend who is a brand name dropper. What I mean is that she loves to highlight either the cost of something she’s recently bought, or she tries to ensure that you know what brand names she’s buying. It’s really getting annoying lately. I mean I don’t care if she has a label on her purse that says Gucci or Prada or whatever. It’s just that EVERYTHING, every conversation she has seems to eventually get back to something to do w/her expensive lifestyle, her recent acqusitions or trips, or her plans to buy more stuff. Even her groceries seem to be better than mine! She does it fairly subtly, but over the last 3 years I’m noticing that this is in like every interaction I’m having w/her. I sometimes worry that she’s alienating other people with all this snobbery and that maybe one day she’ll piss off her boss or a potential boyfriend or something similar, but mostly I’m getting pissed on my own behalf at her lack of awareness that other people (ME!) don’t have the kind of money she does to be throwing around on luxury items. Oh and by the way I’ve tried talking to her about this but she gets all clever and I end up looking like the snob somehow. How do I deal? Sign me PISSY MISS.
Dear PISSY MISS:
Dr. Ding (and yes that is my real name) sympathizes mightily with your predicament. I’ve known a few folks like this over the years, both professionally and personally, and I’ll get right to the point. Usually people like your friend who overvalue material items have some history of serious impoverishment, whether real or imagined, in their history. This might mean they didn’t have the things they needed as a child, like food or clothing, or it may mean they simply saw themselves as having less than others. The kicker is that some folks like this equate having with being later on in life. So they may try to accumulate fancy things that denote status in our society as a means of forging a stable identity for themselves where life is more predictable, unlike childhood, which was unpredictable. It’s a compensatory strategy at best.
Children and teens don’t have much to call their own by way of identity and that’s why marketers and clothing manufacturers are able to sell “the latest” to this demographic so easily; these kids are developmentally unable to completely distinguish their self-opinion from their clothing or possessions. This is normal at this point, remember. But for folks like your friend it can cause problems if it runs unchecked. In adulthood, such problems can take the form of a) totally rejecting material things and/or the status quo and living and dressing like a semi-pauper or b) becoming fixated on having, buying, acquiring, etc as much of what the larger culture says denotes status. Here status symbols become conflated with identity.
In your letter, the description of your friend left me with the impression that she isn’t terribly sensitive to how her constant self-inflating comments affect others. In the clinical world we might say that such a person has a strong trait of narcissism present in her personality and that she is unlikely to change her behavior without benefit of psychotherapy. In Dr. Ding’s world, I would say you probably need to have an air-clearing discussion with her to let her know how truly icky and dare I say even hurtful her actions are to you as a friend. You implied you’ve been friends for a long time. If that’s the case, give her a chance to redeem herself. I’m of course doubtful that she’ll be able to curb her self-aggrandizing impulse, but sometimes friendships run their course and then naturally decline due to divergent life paths. No harm, no foul. It seems that her path is leading her straight into a tiny but well-upholstered prison cell of big-name designers and not much else, which ultimately is actually a bit pathetic.
However….where is your path leading you? Do you know? Would you secretly like to own a mega-dollar pair of shoes but lack the ambition neccessary to make enough money to do so? Do you yearn to travel the world and rare collect objets d’art? Be honest. Sometimes the things that most irritate us about others are those very things we loathe within ourselves. Do a reality check. If it doesn’t bounce, proceed as you wish. And take a little comfort in the fact that your friend’s pattern of snobbery will be rewarded by lack of meaningful relationships later in life. The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine, as the saying goes. Meanwhile, you’ll be having rewarding friendships with people whose values are more consonant with yours. So get busy.
Jesus Is Coming, Everyone Look Busy
Seriously. I have no idea if/when Jesus is or isn’t arriving. Incidentally, I always picture him in old Birkenstock sandals and some sort of hemp dress getting laughed off the planet due to his poor fashion choices, lack of permanent address, and 1,973-year history of unemployment.
Anywho.
I have come up with a plan to help you, gentle reader, learn how to have a more satisfying life. Whether you’re a stay-at-home parent, a brass-bound careerist or an iBook-wielding cafe-sitting dilettante, read on.
First off, if you’re both a) reading and b) understanding this blog your IQ is probably well above average, which, according to my recent calculations, places you somewhere in the upper 16th percentile of intellectual funtioning at a minimum. Therefore, you are most likely getting your tasks accomplished too quickly thus leaving you with lots of time to sit nervously waiting for someone to slap more work on you. Ew! Dr. Ding shudders at the very prospect. The solution? Simple.
You must learn to look busy.
Case in point: in graduate school there was a young woman in my program who was never seen without a clipboard stacked with sheets of paper, a full messenger bag, and hard-soled shoes. She also constantly chewed gum and had a pen behind one ear. She had to consult a very thick day planner for the most mundane of activities, such as lunch. Let’s review her strategy: the clipboard and bag gave the impression that she was both organized and on her way somewhere, and the hard-soled shoes gave off a very terse click-clack that somehow sounded very brusque and busy, and when accompanied by the gum-chewing and ear pen, the overall impression was that of the kind of news reporter usually seen in old black and white movies, notepad and pen at the ready, poised to dash off in a flash to deliver the story or chase the next one.
The funny part is that my former student colleague really didn’t do a whole lot. But she looked like she was extremely busy and organized and going places, and her research always got approved early and her committee moved her through the program quickly. It was the illusion of productivity as well as activity that got her through.
Think about it, gentle reader. How many times have you ended up getting yet another task launched towards you, another deadline tightened, another request lobbed, simply because someone figured you had too much time on your hands? See, here’s the sad truth. People with average intellect just take longer to get things done, and as a result they look busy. Really, really busy! Harried and overburdened, even. No one asks them to join a task force or volunteer to bring cookies or take a look at this last draft of the proposal blah de blah. Doesn’t happen, everyone knows they’re just far too overworked already.
My point? It’s not enough to tell people you’re busy or overworked–you must show them. And you certainly don’t want to fall into that whole “Work smarter, not harder” trap. Oh no. You definitely want to work dumber. Trust me! Although times have changed and hardly anyone carries clipboards or wears hard-soled shoes, you can adapt. Get some gum, start clacking nervously. Put some change in your pocket and jingleangleing baby! Before agreeing to any dinner/pointless meeting/pile of tasks, whip out your Palm Pilot or Treo and furrow your brow as you scroll through your massive and compacted schedule; usually this action alone is enough to deter your adversary, but if not, say you’ll have to have them get back to you after you’ve attempted to move some things around. Like a few games of solitaire.
You can also set your away message in your email to indicate you’re at a training or daylong meeting and can’t be reached. Visiting a diner and reading a real newspaper I believe constitutes some kind of retro-immersion training seminar, doesn’t it? Sure it does. Encouraging others to make inferences is also a handy way to dispense with unpleasant requests, e.g. “I’d love to come to Parents’ Day and operate the giant Pez dispenser, but well, with everything that’s happened lately….I just can’t right now”–said with a meaningful bob of the head and helpless shoulder shrug. “What’s happened lately” may consist of needing to get home in time to watch The Simpsons or possibly having had a bad cold three weeks ago, but that’s your private bidness.
See? It’s easier than you think. You’ll be free of extra work in a jiffy, leaving you more space and time for that novel you’re working on or your marathon training. Or daydreaming. Or hanging out with oh I don’t know, people or something. I think that hippie guy might even agree with me.