How to deal with difficult people

[rolanni]

Asyouknowbob, I have a day-job. By and large, it's a pretty good day-job; certainly, I've had worse. It's occasionally hard-to-very-hard on the hands, Absolutely Brutal on any Planned Writing Schedule, and sometimes the Scholarly Angst is to drown in, on account of there are more scholars angsting than there are departmental secretaries available to absorb it. Still -- a steady paycheck and health insurance, mostly grown-ups to work for... In this economy, and the one that's lumbering down the street, the day-job is not to be lightly discarded.

Working as I do in a college means that every year or three I get a new chair for one or all of the department/programs that I support. The beginning of this school year saw a changing of the departmental chair and next year there will be a change in a program chair.

The outgoing chair is senior faculty, an intelligent and savvy woman I'm going to miss very much. The incoming chair is...junior faculty, smart as new paint -- and certainly smarter than you -- perky, and extremely political. She spends a lot of time on her hair and on planning what to do with her hair. My experience of her as a faculty member is...not positive.

Now, before we go further -- I am myself a difficult person. I'm opinionated, sarcastic, and, um, old. I have no use for perkiness or for girl-games. Let us, indeed, make it plain that I am actively hostile to girl-games, having bypassed the whole girl thing in order to do the work of surviving childhood as a more-or-less intact human being. I am not a nice old lady who likes to take adorable young faculty members under her wing and mother them. Just. No.

So, the new chair is not inheriting a picnic.

On the plus side, I'm a smart, fast, experienced, good worker, with a lively sense of the ridiculous (OK, maybe not a plus, there)-- and I try to keep the lines of communication with my chairs wide open.

Keeping communication open, of course, means that the person on the other end of the line actually listens, which has not been my experience of the incoming chair. She seems -- and this is subjective, of course, but it's all I've got -- to believe that support staff exist only for the brief moment she needs to issue orders. She has no idea of the work attached to accomplishing her orders -- and doesn't care, which, to a point, she shouldn't, though she should have some realization of the fact that she is not the only fish in my supervisory sea.

Now, the challenge awaiting me is having to deal with an inexperienced chair who will insist that she knows everything, who does not have good listening skills, whose bacon I will have to save on a daily basis, and who will blame me utterly for every failure or misstep. I will need to do this and have enough emotional stamina to go home every night and write, because we have books under contract, and I don't intend to quit writing and Devote Myself to being a secretary.

Coping strategies, please? "Not taking it personally" doesn't appear to be an option, though I'd love to hear from anyone who actually manages that.

Comments

[scaleslea.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the kind of person who believes that anything they don't personally do takes no time and no effort to achieve. In college that was the kind of professor who would give eight hours of homework every night and ignore the fact that you were taking four classes from professors who gave out the same amount of homework.

The only way I ever found of dealing with such people was to correct every tiny thing they did until they chose to bother someone else, or realized that I was just as smart as they were. Of course, this can backfire and they can decide to give you extra stupid work.

Doc

on how to handle the yuck she may shovel

[maiaarts.livejournal.com]

Lots of people have given you good stuff on how to deal with her at work.

But then you have to go home, tired, with all of her crap sticking to you.

This might be a good thing to do in combination with the mental box. It has worked for me for thirty years.

Before you enter your home, stop, shut your eyes, take deep breaths. When you are centered, use your hands to scrape all of the 'crap' that is on your shoulders and the rest of you. Place it all in a ball or stone and leave it OUTSIDE.

It will always be there when if you have to pick it up when you go back to work. But get rid of the bad. Don't take it into your home or especially your creative space.

It has worked for me when I have done theater, art, writing or just living.

Also, pour salt in a line across all the thresholds of your house. That is to block all the bad stuff of the world from coming inside your safe place.

Salt should be redone when it feels right to you.

If you know someone who does this, get them to do a cleansing or blessing of your workspace. (I don't mean the university, they may not get non-traditional coping ideas. But there may be more negative stuff in your creative space that has built up, and it wouldn't hurt to clear it all out before her garbage comes your way.

*I love love love what is happening in Saltation and I hope that girlie girl doesn't poison your success. *

Re: on how to handle the yuck she may shovel

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I hadn't even gotten to trying to figure out how to renew my energy when I get home.

I love love love what is happening in Saltation

*Grins*

Re: on how to handle the yuck she may shovel

[cailleuch.livejournal.com]

I'm one of the professors but have been dealing with a Dean who is a psychopath and Chair who took "willfully blind" to new heights. I second, third etc. the idea of doing something that leaves the "stuff" at school. I've watched two colleagues crumble under the pressure while (I think) I maintained my sanity. they concentrated on the bad reliving and renewing it in their minds. When I got to my car I shed the "stuff" while spending a few minutes tying it up into literal knots of pretty wool and cotton fiber. Some got to decompose while hanging in a tree in front of my house, others I threw in the river on the way home. The ""begone from me NOW" river method was only used for very bad days but as the fiber amounts were small and of organic material I didn't feel too bad giving them a little trip.

So figure something out that works for you and good luck.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

The only way I ever found of dealing with such people was to correct every tiny thing they did until they chose to bother someone else

Yanno? I don't want to get mired in that game, either. Waste of good, creative energy, and I don't want to waste any more energy on this than is needful to survive it.