(from "Petunia"): As early as the interview with me, Nasty Boss was carrying on about my predecessor, who sounded like she practically had horns and a tail. Since then, Nasty Boss has done nothing but put obstacles in my path and badmouth me. She's also browbeaten the senior faculty members into not renewing my contract.

Meanwhile the other new faculty member (male, A.B.D., know-it-all) has been renewed and given all kinds of perks, including a new office in the building with the others. I'm still relegated to a far-off building with faculty members from other departments.

And it's not even clear that I've been let go. Four months have passed, and the paperwork still hasn't been done.

I have done everything I was told to do, including committee work, an article in a refereed journal, and community outreach (a well-received project reaching 1,000 local children). Is Nasty Boss upset that I've shown her up, or is it that she can't get along with other women?

Should I complain to the dean or the president about the hostile work environment here?

Question: (from "Rhoda") I'm in a new academic-affairs staff position, and my boss, a sub-dean, fired a subordinate and tried to dump the extra work on me. Then she directed me to "practice" a research talk in front of the secretarial/administrative staff, and egged them on to criticize me. Then, just before I was about to talk to a student group, my boss said loudly, "Are you going to be OK with this? Should I stay with you?"

She also wants work done instantly. Just a few days after assigning me a big, multistage project, she complained, "It's not done yet?" and wrote a note in her file. (I admit I do have difficulty estimating how much time a project will take.)

I need two years at this job to publish and look somewhat stable, but I don't like working in a war zone. My fantasy about being loved or cherished evaporated at my last job, where I got along with my boss despite his inability to protect me from institutional abuse. (I was assigned two-and-a-half jobs there and everyone else stood around, wringing their hands, asking when I'd get everything finished.)

What to do?

Question: (from "Simon"): I'm a sixth-year Ph.D. student whose fellowship was not renewed -- I think. My adviser was very angry with me at renewal time, but was overruled by the graduate chair. And now I'm back with my old superior and both of us are kissing each other's feet. Should I appeal the nonrenewal decision?

Question: (from "Theodore"): Where do I get a sword? Yesterday "The Provost" gave his assistant a 24-hour ultimatum to get out of Dodge. She contacted the human-resources department for a transfer. They told her to roll over and play dead, and she resigned. Since I work at the same college where The Provost (hand-picked by The President) reigns supreme, I'm worried. Since the human-resources department is as shameful as The Provost, how can we (faculty members and administrators) protect ourselves?

Answer: Ms. Mentor wonders how she can answer these queries without a plot summary or a gloss. Petunia, Rhoda, Simon, and Theodore all appear to dwell in peculiar, even surrealistic worlds where their bosses move in malevolent ways, bent on thrashing and tormenting those beneath them in the employment chain.

And yet there must be more to each plot. Although many bosses are malicious, manipulative, or mad, all must get the work done, somehow. Since humiliation and harassment of the innocent are not usually the best motivators, Ms. Mentor does wonder what key details have been left out of this month's missives.

As she muses, she recalls the California college student who complained that he was constantly being arrested on campus, although he was peace-loving and never bothered anyone. However, it turned out that he had a habit of attending class naked and waving ... well, it was distracting.

What red flags or other organs have been waved at the bosses in this month's scenarios?

Petunia seems disinclined to find out what triggers Nasty Boss's animosity. How did Petunia show up the Boss (if she did)? Is there a history of provocation? Why has Nasty Boss exiled Petunia from the regular faculty space? Or has Petunia simply spent too much time on community outreach and not enough on her teaching -- which she does not mention at all?

It could be that Nasty Boss is indeed an irrational sexist; maybe she's the one with horns and a tail. Maybe she bays at the moon. But Petunia should have been keeping a Tenure Diary all along, with dates, documents, notes of conversations, promises made and kept and broken. Before Petunia complains to anyone about anything, she needs to understand her own part and her own lines.

Similarly, Rhoda's boss sounds like a combination of overprotective would-be mentor and witless tyrant. And yet ... there's something about Rhoda that makes her bosses pile work on her and then nag her about it. Is Rhoda an over-eager volunteer, a wimp who can't say no? Does Rhoda need training in time management? (Maybe she needs to review Ms. Mentor's advice in "Protecting Your Precious Time.")

Simon seems even more befuddled. Was his fellowship renewed? Is he coming, going, or stuck in the middle? He can hardly file an appeal against something that did not happen. Why was his adviser angry? Why did the graduate chair overrule the adviser? What is the role of the old superior? And what about kissing each other's feet? (That detail charms Ms. Mentor.)

Finally, Theodore does not know, or isn't saying, why The Provost fired his own assistant. Had the assistant done anything? Or nothing? Is everyone else guilty of whatever the assistant did? If not, why are they quaking? (The sword they need is, of course, tenure.)

In each of these cases, Ms. Mentor does not want to blame the apparent victims: Petunia, Rhoda, Simon, and Theodore. Nor is she merely seeking out prurient dirt (although she always enjoys a spot of that). Rather, she cannot perform her duties as dispenser of perfect advice when she has but partial information.

If Petunia and the others do not know why they have been harangued, ignored, fired, or made miserable, maybe they do have deranged bosses. But Ms. Mentor reminds her charges that academics have typically spent at least 20 years in school watching authority figures prance and tyrannize and excite and bore their audiences.

Petunia and the others should be able to figure out what ticks off their bosses -- and either stop doing it, or conceal the fact that they are still doing it. (We mortals, after all, control only our own behavior.) Ms. Mentor is willing to connive with the sometimes-lazy, the sometimes-ignorant, and the sometimes-boorish. But she needs the whole truth before she can work her own mysterious magic and solve all.

Question: (from three different correspondents): Because of my stellar record, I'd like to be considered for an early tenure decision. But my mentor says to wait another year. Will I be a fool if I bull my way ahead and ignore my mentor's advice?

Answer: Yes.

SAGE READERS: As all followers of Ms. Mentor know, October is Exploding Head Syndrome Month. She recommends costumes, kicking pumpkins, and attending to tales of virtue rewarded. To wit:

Ms. Mentor has heard again from "Harriet," the good citizen who last month reported on Professor Counterpart, an apparent incompetent whose student packets brimmed with glaring statistical errors.

"How could someone with a Ph.D. in Psych make such errors?" wondered the redoubtable Harriet -- only to discover that Professor Counterpart had in fact flunked his dissertation defense. The wily fellow had been claiming a Ph.D. he did not possess. Alerted, naturally, by an anonymous tipster, the local newspaper has pursued the story ... and Harriet, although feeling "a bit soiled," now sleeps the sleep of the just.

Ms. Mentor continues to welcome triumphant crowings, heartfelt fulminations, plaintive queries, and gossip of all kinds. Anonymity is guaranteed.