I feel like "and someone sighs deeply at you" is superfluous.
With that attitude, you'll never even see the Alamo.
You don't have to see it. Just remember it.
I remember it as a fort not far from a river that they turn off every winter for maintenance.
Our rivers are too big to turn off, which seems more natural. However, they are indisputably more dirty.
Don't Mess with Texas! We might sigh at you.
If Ted Cruz becomes President, Putin better understand the Texas sigh.
(Is it me or does "Texas sigh" not sound more sexual than aggressive?)
So C's response to M giving her work that she is unable to do (either because she doesn't have the skills - is this what 'inappropriate' means? - or because she doesn't have the time) is to accept it, but give a sigh, and then either not do it or do a shitty job, and complain about it later to her colleagues behind M's back? She's a grown woman in her 60s, right? That's not a typo for "she is 13 years old"?
That's massively unprofessional. If she can't do the work, she should say "Sorry, M, I really don't have time/ I don't know how to do this/ this isn't really my job and you should probably give it to someone else like D, because doing this sort of thing is D's job."
If you give someone work and they accept it, then you're entitled to assume that they'll actually make a good-faith effort to do it.
C and M are colleagues with similar but not identical statuses (M is higher on the food chain, but is not C's superior or manager or anything). M is interrupting C to ask her to copy edit this thing RIGHT THIS SECOND NOW. Interrupting like showing up at her door at 11 and saying "I need you to do this by 2 today so I can make the deadlline."
(Heebie's in class I think. I hope this is not a too-revealing summary.)
I don't think that's how it works in America, or outside of it when foreign policy is involved.
Also I am going to do this sigh at Hawaii next time she gives me attitude. THAT will teach her!
Also this really does seem like the perfect time to do a horrifically bad job that would be completely humiliating for M when people read/whatever it - goofy spelling errors, obviously wrong word usage, sentences 'corrected' to say different things, etc.
I'm on a call with Texans now. They have slightly less pronounced accents than the Germans.
8: then M is a disorganised imbecile and C is a passive-aggressive teenage child. C needs to woman up and just say "No, I can't, I don't have time." She is deliberately leaving M with the (presumably false) impression that she can and will do what he's asking, in the hope that this will make him look bad when she does a bad job (or doesn't do one at all) and will make her look like a saintly martyr when she complains about it to her other colleagues.
It wouldn't be inappropriate to ask for it as a collegial favor. "Hey, would you mind proofreading this for me when you have a chance, sometime before next Friday?" and then be owed a beer or whatever.
But also, yes, she needs to learn how to say no. (it is always harder than I anticipate)
14- Oh. No, I think she did it. She dropped all her own work (or half-assed it or something) and did his thing instead.
(I think "woman up" is an acceptable phrase, as is "man up", because "man up" is about taking responsibility for your actions, so it's implicitly comparing the subject to a (male) child, not to an adult woman.)
12 Or just add the word "penis" or similar in random places.
16: OK, well, that's slightly better because at least she wasn't deliberately sabotaging someone else. But she still needs to start acting like an adult. Either that or she actually believes that her work really is less important than his, in which case she did the right thing but she should stop complaining afterwards about doing it.
AIMHMOBH, I once stopped 500 copies of a letter from being sent because I happened to notice they referred to "pubic schools."
A friend of mine did that to another friend of mine's dissertation that he dictated to her then asked her to copy edit. They were girlfriend and boyfriend at the time. Got married. Still married the last I heard.
If it has his name appended just change it to "John "Big Dick" Smith" (substituting in his actual name), in a way that makes it look like that's his usual tagline and it inadvertently got used instead of his professional one.
People ask me to do all kind of stuff. I figure if they can't figure out that avoiding a direct answer is the same as a 'no' they shouldn't work in a university.
8. I don't understand the history that makes M suppose it's appropriate to ask a junior colleague he doesn't manage to do anything at all, except as a collegial favour. He can't have suddenly had a brainstorm and decided that the rest of his department are at his beck and call because. There must be some background to it.
21: I tried to do something like that to my own dissertation but my adviser caught me and I had to fix it. She said it had something to do with "professionalism" or something, and no amount of "but it's hilarious and come on half the committee probably didn't read this thing and they were supposed to, so it's not like anyone else is going to" would change her mind.
25 It actually made it into the final product. She put something in about a hammer hitting a penis as an example of something or other (philosophy diss mostly about Bergson). I attended his defense one of the members of his committee raised the issue.
I take the point of the OP as illustrating culture clash. She is saying "no", just not in a way that he recognises.
She should be more explicit, but she may well think that she's being quite clear.
I don't understand the history that makes M suppose it's appropriate to ask a junior colleague he doesn't manage to do anything at all, except as a collegial favour.
The history is presumably that (from his point of view) she's always done it in the past, putting aside her own work when necessary, and never refused or even complained. Why wouldn't he keep doing it?
I agree with ajay and am tempted to view it as a pattern of Texas culture because C sounds a lot like a friend of mine who's from Texas. n=2 is an adequate sample size, right?
As for M, this story is consistent with him being a disorganized imbecile and also sexist or pushy or whatever, but not adequate proof of it. Sometimes reasonable people get unreasonable deadlines. Am I sympathizing with him more because I'm a man or because I procrastinate? (To reiterate, I could totally believe that he's a pure asshole, but not just based on this story.)
The whole middle of the United States isn't very big on directly telling people to fuck off. If you move there, you should just get used to it. Like learning to not say "fanny" if you move the to the U.K.
27 is right. It's hard to overstate how steeped in Texas culture she is, and he's being a bit rude and clueless. Yes, she should be more assertive, but that's a pretty culture-laden statement. She has not been groomed in Academia or ever lived outside of SadTown.
As for M, this story is consistent with him being a disorganized imbecile and also sexist or pushy or whatever, but not adequate proof of it.
Moderately but not extremely? Very liberal and not at all sexist compared to his country of origin, kind of unthinking in a very math-CS-out-to-lunch familiar way about how these things play out in real life.
That sort of backs up 28, I think. He's doing something that has always worked in the past and never had any adverse consequences as far as he can see, so there's no reason not to keep doing it.
She has not been groomed in Academia
...apart from working at a university for the last forty-something years??
Kind of like the person that my mother sighs and says "Ah, x, you'll live a long life," with the implication that all the people around x will die of stress-related conditions because they are always having to resolve all the problems caused by x's absentmindedness?
(actually you could substitute "peep" for "x", but theoretically my mother could have said this about someone else).
No. She taught at a high school until the last few years.
When I worked with support staff in Texas, I always found them to be extremely direct. Like, I THINK I know what you mean by the "sigh" but it would be accompanied with a "no fucking way."
We middle Americans have 99 different ways of saying, "I'll do this when I'm good and ready but not before."
When I worked with support staff in Texas, I always found them to be extremely direct.
The real answer to 36 is, "yes...maybe. Unless it flew under your radar."
35: ah, I see. My mental sets of "60-something veteran high-school teachers" and "people who have immense difficulty telling off lazy and entitled colleagues in extremely direct terms" hadn't really overlapped before now.
41, I assume her methods work very well with lazy and entitled colleagues who are also from Texas.
The guy really is being a clueless jerk. I mean, it comes down to what chris y said about "except as a collegial favor" -- I'll do a lot of things that aren't my job if a colleague requests them, because sometimes people need help and there's a presumption that such requests are going to be reasonable and the help will be reciprocated.
What sounds is happening here is that the guy made the first couple of requests and the woman did them as a "collegial favor". The guy interpreted her willingness to be reasonably helpful, though, as an acceptance of a pattern where he could assign her work, which is not a reasonable mistake if that's not their relative position in the hierarchy -- to Ajay's question: "Why wouldn't he keep doing it?" the only response is "If he's a exploitative asshole, no reason. If he isn't, that's why not."
And now she's in a position where saying no means pointing out that he's being an asshole -- "I can do this work for you, and was willing to do similar work in the past when I thought the favors were going to be reasonable and reciprocated. I am going to refuse now because I have found out that you are unreasonable and unappreciative." I don't think she's got a better strategy than a clear, direct refusal, but I'm not surprised she's finding it difficult.
I'm also terrible at saying 'no', although I'm getting better at it, and occasionally modifying it to 'fuck off'.
I had a request in from someone yesterday to do a fairly menial technical thing. A menial technical thing that might have been the sort of thing I did as a favour six or seven years ago. Definitely not part of my remit as 'God-King of All the Technical Things'.* I _still_ get those sorts of requests, because, you know, I'm techical, so I've nothing better to do than grab a file for someone.
I'm still politely passing it on to other people to do, or, if I'm feeling more annoyed, I write an email saying 'No', or even occasionally gently pointing out that it's not my job. It doesn't get through. Next time, I'll go with, 'So, see your boss? See your boss's boss? I'm still fucking senior to them. Now fuck off.'
* imposter syndrome, etc. I don't think I actually _am_ GKoAtTT, but it is my job description.
Oh, and I/we got nominated for a ybbeW.
Vote:
https://pv.webbyawards.com/2016/websites/general-website/art
Plug/bleg, etc.
Remember that MetaFilter thing about Ask culture versus Guess culture from a couple of years ago? This seems like the same issue (and one where I tend to think of people being evangelical about the superiority of Asking as being self-righteous twerps).
It strikes me that what's needed is for someone to organise what used to be called an "intervention." Get three or four people- I don't know who, it might depend on the physical organisation of the office space- to go up to M and say, "Excuse us, but we can't help noticing that you've taken to treating C as if she was the help. Well, she's not, she has important stuff of her own to do, and you can't be constantly disrupting it just because she's too polite and good natured to say no. So we thought we'd drop you a hint."
Something like 50 more or less happened, gently. There are more appropriate resources like the building secretary or the writing center.
And now she's in a position where saying no means pointing out that he's being an asshole
Well, not necessarily - simply saying "Sorry, I don't have time!" would do the trick, wouldn't it? And if she says that enough then he'll stop asking.
I don't know what the mores are in h-g's workplace with regard to colleagues asking each other to do work; I've worked in places where there's just a general acceptance that colleagues will proofread each other's work as needed (assuming they have time), and places where there definitely isn't such an acceptance. He might be being exploitative, or not.
48. Voted, Should you put it on the Liber Facierum? Or should some neutral party do so?
re: 49
I hadn't read that. Interesting.
I still think not actually saying "yes", especially to a repeated request, is perfectly clear to anybody.
55: The key is to not say yes, and also not do it.
Well, not necessarily - simply saying "Sorry, I don't have time!" would do the trick, wouldn't it?
If it's true or he doesn't get investigative about what else she's doing in the next two hours -- it's perfectly plausible that he's got a solid idea that she could do the work requested and still manage to get her own stuff done.
As you can tell from my commenting habits, at most times in the day I could drop everything and spend half an hour being a typist for one of the line attorneys I supervise, without damaging my own output. If I got a request like that, the appropriate response would not be "I don't have time to do your work" but "You are not in a position to ask me to do your work, (outside normal 'collegial favor' reciprocity)."
Expecting her to lie about whether she could grant the favor puts her in the wrong, because now she's lying, and is a still a pretty transparent version of calling him unreasonably exploitative.
I don't know what the mores are in h-g's workplace with regard to colleagues asking each other to do work; I've worked in places where there's just a general acceptance that colleagues will proofread each other's work as needed (assuming they have time), and places where there definitely isn't such an acceptance. He might be being exploitative, or not.
You do know that Heebie, who works there, has explicitly said that he's out of line.
re: 53
I don't think it matters. I probably will stick it there myself, too. I'm keen to have anyone from work trace me to my sekrit sdrawkcab identify here, but Facebook or elsewhere is fine.
49, 54: This? It sounds vaguely familiar, and definitely sounds like the kind of thing that would have been discussed here when it was current, but I don't remember and can't find a specific thread here about it.
Contra 49, I'll be conciliatory and say that both sides sound reasonable depending on your assumptions about hard-to-define social niceties. "I can stay with you for a week, you don't mind, do you?" and "If there's any problem at all with a brief visit, just let me know and I'll totally understand and make other plans, OK?" are both technically questions.
I'll also say that I both lean towards preferring "ask" culture even though I have a hard time saying no. I'm pretty sure that if I actually had a concrete reason to say no, I could overcome my fear of confrontation and do it, but the first reason that comes to mind is often just something like "well, I'm not enthusiastic about it," which is both inadequate in general and a personal tendency I think I should try to fight in particular.
I'm still thinking about "Sorry, I don't have time" as an excuse. Doesn't that implicitly accept that "There's nothing untoward about your asking me to do your secretarial work, and if I had time to get it done, it would be wrong of me to refuse"?
You do know that Heebie, who works there, has explicitly said that he's out of line.
But I don't know if the out-of-line thing was
"asking someone else to do work for you",
"asking them when they're really busy themselves",
"asking them and not reciprocating when asked yourself", "asking them and not taking no, or rather *sigh*, for an answer",
or what.
I don't know if she has to go as far as telling lies, though, as long as it happens once or twice in a row (or if "I don't have time" is actually false). The real point is just to express "I can do it but I don't have to do it". Even vague gesturing at other priorities can usually do that, unless he's genuinely a huge enough asshole not to get clear on the fact that someone treating it as optional probably means that for them it is optional. It's just the stronger version of the sigh, and a lot harder to see as just a kind of dislike for that work.
61: Sure. My negative comment was directed to people who get evangelical about Asking, not that one strategy is always superior to the other.
63: I thought it was something along the lines of "not being clear on her actual responsibilities, probably in a clueless-sexism way where he doesn't stop to think hard about what kinds of clerical work belong to whom*, and exactly how senior some of the women working there really are, and (more importantly) failing to see that he's being corrected sharply about it (probably due to a cultural misunderstanding)."
So, culpable on his part but in the way where normal social messaging works fine to correct it and no one goes away feeling like they've been embarrassed or have had to be rude to someone. In this case though that's very much not what's happening.
*Who knows why. I remember at Minnesota there was at least one professor who had the department secretary do large parts of his typing for him - as in, give her handwritten sheets and have her type them up and send them back to him. I suspect she put up with it at least partially because (1) he was old enough that he literally had spent something like two thirds of his career at that university at times when that really genuinely was how it worked, and (2) he was a pretty good guy all things considered so it was hard to dislike him the way (a large number of) people did for some of the other really-old-academic-jerk sorts.
I had never imagined passive-aggressiveness as part of Texan culture before.
re: 62
I am gradually moving away from just telling people that I am too busy -- which I am, I'm insanely busy, and it gets worse -- or giving them some nicey nicey reason why I can't accede to their request towards more explicitly making it clear that it's not that I can't do it but that I _won't_ do it. And making it clear that I won't do it, because it's not my job, and they have no right to ask.
But psychologically I find that quite hard to do.
It's easier, ironically, with very senior people, since I'm psychologically more comfortable with kicking up, and also, very senior people here tend to be very very busy and are quite often saying no themselves.
||
New York inquiry:
How much luggage is too much to take on the M train to williamsburg at rush hour, boarding near Penn Station? In terms of etiquette as well as physical room?
|>
Yeah, I think it's reasonable to find it hard. Drawing attention to the fact that someone else is behaving badly is a very aggressive-feeling thing to do, and a clear "I could do that, but I won't because it's not my job and it's not a reasonable request from you to me" is pointing out that they're behaving badly by making the request. Sometimes you have to, but it's not easy.
69: What are the possibilities? I'm not going to have a specific answer for the M, because I don't know, but I can talk about the trains at rush hour generally.
68. Some of the engineers at the place I used to work occasionally wore t-dhirts inscribed "No, I won't fix your computer for you". You should see if such are still available and get some.
The M was my line, but going the other way to Queens. Still, how much luggage are you contemplating?
One carryon bag with booster carseat strapped to it, one backpack, one 4-year-old with small backpack. I am so annoyed at having acquiesced about the stupid useless booster seat.
You sound fine for the luggage. I figured you had a large valise on rollers or the like. It's managing the 4 year old I'd be more worried about, but then I know you already know that.
And yeah, booster seat sounds stupid and useless.
You should be OK, but the Baseball Furies and the Grammercy Riffs will look on your booster seat look as coming from a rival gang. If you see them, abandon the four year old and run. Good luck out there Boppers.
Yeah, that's fine. It's not impossible that the train will be too crowded to get on, but that much luggage shouldn't make the difference.
You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. You know you haven't stopped talking since I came in here?
The skill I'm trying to master (mistress?) is stopping after "I can't."
M: "I need you to do this by 2 today so I can make the deadline."
C: (with a weak smile) "I'm afraid I can't."
M waits to hear the excuse.
C says nothing, maintains eye contact.
Then either M realizes he can't really ask "why not" if he's not her supervisor or, if he's a really big jerk, he does ask and C, having used this time to remind herself that he has no right to impose on her, says, "I have deadlines of my own to meet." (Sighs.)
(Though I realize that he tried to distance himself from that song.)
I thought dying on your birthday was a good sign.
Right. And did so at just the time when he could have profited with a career as a conservative icon.
If you haven't listened to the albums from Strangers/Pride in What I Am, most of which were recently re-released as double albums, do so right now. Incredible 60s-California studio sound, incredible guitar, dark vocals. The greatest.
67: Texans are super passive-aggressive (though it's women more than men). That's the source of the stereotype that "Bless your heart" is Texan for "You're an idiot".
Two Hours Reading About Merle New Yorker, 1990, via Loomis
I'll listen to the early albums tonight.
It might be Texas, or Ask vs Guess, but this is also an exact match for chapter 3 of the book "Mars and Venus in the Workplace". Men grumble when they agree to do something because they have to refocus, he says, but it is temporary. Women interpret it as they would if they responded that way: "I have too much to do and will resent you if you make me do this". But M interprets it as acquiescence.
I don't believe in bucketing all members of a gender into one bucket, and my communication style is "Venus" in one chapter and "Mars" in the next. But as far as identifying recognizable situations like this one where you never realized your communication styles were clashing, it's a great book.
So let me ask y'all, before this thread dies entirely (too late?) --
As some of you might know, I'm an English professor. Generally when I'm in my office, I keep my door open. This is partly because the office is tiny, and partly because I want to encourage my students to feel free to come see me during office hours.
BUT.
Not infrequently, students who aren't even my students -- business students, most often, but sometimes science students and so on -- will see my open door, and come into the office with some paper for some class that is not mine. They will say something of this nature: "Can you read this for me? It's for X class and I need to make a good grade."
I will say, "Oh, there's a writing center in Vines. Here are the hours."
They will say, "Yes, but there's always too many people there."
(Which is true. We're underfunded, so we only have one writing tutor on duty at any time, and she's always overwhelmed.)
Am I justified in telling these students to fuck right off?
Or should I help them?
I'll add that I'm not just fucking about in my office during office hours. I'm working. (I'm always working.) So they're interrupting the work I need to get done.
On the other hand, they are students at the university, and it is university work they want me to look at.
really-old-academic-jerk sorts
Ours has finally been stripped of his ability to harass people via his university e-mail. This blessed event even got a writeup in the local paper.
re: 91
Definitely tell them to fuck off.
And we are back to the Ask/Guess thing. I can't imagine having the brass neck to ask someone who I don't know, and whom I know to have no responsibility for me or my work, to do something like that.
Yes, tell them to go away. Nicely, sure. but away.
I'm with everyone else here: tell them to go away. Even better, tell them to go to the professor for the class they're in. It's not cheating to talk to the professor about your paper beforehand and rewrite/revise stuff based on that.
I would actually be tempted to give someone who asked a question like that a firm "more than sorrow than in anger" talking to about how they're going to offend the hell out of people being that presumptuous, and they should learn some manners. (When I say tempted, I mean I probably wouldn't. Almost certainly. But the words "What on earth made you think it was appropriate for you to ask me to act as your unpaid tutor?" would be springing to my lips.)
But just telling them to go away is enough.
I have often wondered what these students are thinking. None of them know me at all -- I've never had this happen with a student who *knows* me -- so they're obviously just wandering through the English building looking for an open door.
I'll send them back to the instructor who assigned the paper. That's a good solution.
101: Or you could give them neb's email. I hear he proofreads just for the fun of it.
If you're feeling sad about Merle Haggard, give Sturgill Simpson's latest a listen. Amazeballs. It'll pick you up.
they're obviously just wandering through the English building looking for an open door.
Or they're looking for an office to have sex in and when they walk into yours and find someone there they have to think up a plausible excuse for being there.
Just smoke pot with them and get them EXCITED about POETRY and LIFE, like English teachers are supposed to.
"Since I am not the teacher who assigned this paper, I might steer you the wrong way. I also cannot give it the time that it deserves right now. Sometimes when you half-ass something, you do more harm than good. Sorry I can't help you."
I have a similar problem in that people want a quick answer to a legal problem, for free. It might be a friend or a acquaintance or a stranger.
"Will you just give me a quick answer?
I say: "Why would you want me to give you an answer without having all of the facts or knowing exactly what the law says? I am not going to potentially steer you wrong only to have you come back and blame me."
Quick advice is bad advice.
People asking doctors for free advice is how cod liver oil became a medicine.
Will -- just do what 105 recommends.
107:
Somewhat related: I wanted to hear the crazies on the radio, so I listened to the Glen Beck radio show for a short bit.
You can tell how stupid his audience is by the commercials that they play. It is all end times stuff and snake oil medicines.
R.Tigre: When do you think this questions come up!?!?
"Sure, I will take over this project for you. I'll be sure to give you credit for getting it started."
My first thought was, "how do they even know what your area of expertise is? Are they not concerned about asking an expert in the wrong field?" I mean, I realize they know what your department is based on what building they're in, and I guess there could be other signs. But even within departments, there are specialties. I was half-imagining asking an English teacher for help with a history paper, or vice versa.
If you feel at all guilty for telling them to fuck off, then in addition to directing them to the student writing center, direct them to whatever dean or director makes the decisions about staffing it. There, you've gone the extra mile.
Heh. I love the idea of sending them to our dean.
"Yeah, I know, it sucks that the writing lab is understaffed. I tell you what, Dean XXX will be glad to help you! He's right down the hall from the writing center, too -- just tell him what you told me, about not being able to get helped at the writing lab!"
Speaking of my dean, he actually made a joke in the meeting yesterday.
IDK if I have mentioned my dean previously. He's new. I can him the Stepford Dean, which ought to tell you everything you need to know about him.
He's never cracked a joke or a smile before yesterday, so this was amazing. We were holding the presentations for the new department chair, and he was doing the preliminary guff, like here's what we're doing, here's what they'll say, yap yap fap, and then he paused, and almost smiled, and said, "I noticed there in the back (we were meeting in a room in the library) there's a closet that says 'Chair Storage.' And I was thinking, hmmmm...."
We were all so startled we laughed for like ten minutes.
He was very pleased.
HE LOOKS A PROPER NANA IN HIS GREAT BIG HOBNAILED BOOTS
Just because I started this doesn't mean I understand it.
OI! WHERE'S ME TIGER'S HEAD?
Just because I started this doesn't mean I understand it.
Mouseover?