Month: October 2003

fumbling for the ripcord

Well, I submitted my resignation letter, and got my reply (the Way Things Are Done). To my considerable disappointment, the letter contained a reminder that the corrective action process was still in effect, in direct contradiction to the agreement we had reached.

This came on top of a very frustrating morning as the two most insecure yet ego-ridden people I have ever worked with manifested their highest level of incompetence: if they can’t communicate and work with each other, why must I be whipsawed at every turn?

So I’m at home today, making sure I keep an inevitable ulcer at bay. I met with a pair of union stewards yesterday and their consensus was that this boiled to a lack of groveling on my part. The action they want to correct, if you read between the lines, is a lack of obeisance and self-flagellation on my part. Sadly, I’m genetically incapable of panicking or making everything into a crisis, and I was sufficiently well brought-up to avoid making my failure to plan someone else’s emergency.

So I’m looking into making tomorrow my last day and just saying to hell with it. It’s not worth it.

feature request: mail filter suggestions

This is for all email clients on all platforms.

I keep running into people who moan about how much email they get and how they so far behind blah blah blah . . . . .

Do these people not understand what mail filters are for or how they work? I have to wonder if they understand the basics of filing paper documents: the principles are the same. What I have done for years is take my most frequent correspondents and filtered their email in their own mailbox, so a. I don’t miss any of their mail, and b. to unclutter my inbox. The stuff that doesn’t fall under any rubric stays in the inbox and can be dealt with as I get to it. But stuff from the people who I correspond with frequently gets filtered out so I can be sure I get to it.

Is this so hard? The people who tell me they have 700 or 1000 unread emails probably need it all printed out for them: perhaps they would find it easier to deal with.

So my feature request would be for an email client to review the corpus of already received email against new email and offer to create a filter based on the receiver’s particulars. Apparently some folks need the help with this . . . . .

a dose of rationality

I arrived at my desk this morning, dispirited at the thought of another day, but glad it was Friday. This is the first job I can recall where I counted the days of the week, longing for Friday. My voice mail light was lit: perhaps an outside call, perhaps not. Hmm, it was the Superior Professor, calling from a car dealership, saying she wanted to talk about my resignation letter.

It turns out an agreed-upon resignation date *would* be to everyone’s advantage, after all. And, surprise of surprises, she understood that my motives, to give her and the Subordinate Professor an opportunity to figure out how best to proceed, were in good faith. And that would mean a cessation of hostilities, no more corrective/punitive action . . . .

I couldn’t believe it. I found myself sitting at my desk after the call ended, sweat pouring down my back, a sense of relief like a weight being lifted from my chest.

No mention of it the rest of the day, when the car appointment was over: we just worked.
Continue reading “a dose of rationality”

. . . but a dimmer light than it was

Well, my struggle with the workplace continues.

My offer to resign effective Dec 31 is acceptable. But the Superior Professor ran the idea by the Human Resources Drone who reminded her that she can still keep the corrective action/dismissal process in force, putting me at continued risk of losing any chance of re-employment at the University. I’ve already offered to leave, three times since June: what’s the benefit to “corrective action” for someone who won’t be around?

Why anyone would persist in this is beyond me: three out of three co-workers who heard this story used the word “vindictive” so perhaps there’s something to it. A comment on the previous posting is far too charitable . . . . this isn’t just selective memory at work, it’s malice.

So much for my efforts to make the transition easier: rather than focus on the future, it’s considered a better use of their time to re-hash the past and mess up the present. My incentive to help them going forward is nil: if I stay, I run the risk of their discretionary power. If I leave, I lose income and benefits for my family.

the light at the end of the tunnel

According to an oral agreement reached today by myself and the Superior Professor, my last day at my current job will be Dec 31, 2003. Of course, she has to check with the authorities to see if this is all above-board, but my research and my intuition tell me it’s up to her discretion and sense of fairness, vestigial as that may be.

This marks the third time I have made the offer to leave while still allowing them — the Superior Professor and the Subordinate Professor — to find the right person for the job and me to find a new position. I made the offer in June, realizing that this was not a long-term situation, but that wasn’t what was heard (hey, classes were out for the summer and European teaching assignments were more appealing to think about).

After this contractually-specified corrective process came about, I reiterated the offer, still no sale. Today, after several minutes of conversation, I laid the idea on the table again and it was accepted, with the admission that my previous attempts had not registered at all. When I explained, with stunned amazement, that this was the same offer I had made previously, I was told that wasn’t what she heard at all. (I related this story to a high-ranking member of the administration and after he expressed relief that things would be resolved without any prejudicial information in my record, he made it clear that his experience — what you say isn’t what they hear — is consistent with mine, for both the Superior and the Subordinate Professors.) The prejudicial information is very important: if this process gets to the next stage — again, purely at her discretion — I lose any oportunity to work at the University.

Is it any surprise this has been such a struggle? If you can’t communicate something as fundamental as that — especially to someone who claims to have the interests of their research and policy center first and foremost in the mind — what do you have?

So that’s a relief. I had to then listen to a litany of gripes about how the Superior Professor comes to work after dinner to write and research and her family is suffering as a result. But working at her office rather than at home is her choice, by her own admission: her children are, in her words, “an attractive nuisance.” And the things she is working on are her choice: one doesn’t assign tasks to full professors, after all. So if she has chosen to work on law review articles and programs to raise the profile of her center, that’s her choice.

And of course I had to hear a torrent of abuse and revisionist history directed at her predecessor, who to hear it all was inept in every way but is in fact a senior assistant attorney general for this state and the chair of the Consumers Union board. Not a lightweight, in other words.

And then the Subordinate Professor gripes about how underpaid she is and never had any money: I have learned never to go to coffee with her, unless I’m prepared to buy. Two full-time professor salaries, no kids, no hobbies that I can discern, and still no money. Granted, there may be loans to pay off, but those can be refinanced to 2% notes these days. I think it’s just too much dining out and Living the Life. And that recently arrived shipment of furniture and art from central Europe, bought during the summer while over there, probably doesn’t help.

This all seems so surreal, but I have never understood surrealism to involve pain . . . .

I’m just glad it will finally come to an end, by the end of December if not sooner.

the transubstantiation of corn

The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions of Obesity

The Appalachian range made it difficult and expensive to transport surplus corn from the lightly settled Ohio River Valley to the more populous markets of the East, so farmers turned their corn into whiskey — a more compact and portable ”value-added commodity.” In time, the price of whiskey plummeted, to the point that people could afford to drink it by the pint, which is precisely what they did.

Nowadays, for somewhat different reasons, corn (along with most other agricultural commodities) is again abundant and cheap, and once again the easiest thing to do with the surplus is to turn it into more compact and portable value-added commodities: corn sweeteners, cornfed meat and chicken and highly processed foods of every description. The Alcoholic Republic has given way to the Republic of Fat, but in both cases, before the clever marketing, before the change in lifestyle, stands a veritable mountain of cheap grain.

I hadn’t understood how directly government policy influenced how farmers produced and sold food today versus 50 or even 30 years ago. I fear it’s too esoteric to be a campaign issue, and perhaps is tuch a political hot potato as to be untouchable by any but a second term president, one who doesn’t need to be re-elected.

Found in Rebecca’s pocket