Question: Until now in my career, I have been able to view jerks from afar, and I pitied anyone who actually had to work with them. As a graduate student, and then as a postdoc, I worked with amazing, honest, brilliant researchers. But now I work with miscreants (Ms. Mentor has translated a cruder original into that term).
Actually, that's untrue. I work for miscreants and with lovely, burdened, at-the-end-of-their-rope researchers. I'll be leaving this department, even if it means leaving academe, because I refuse to work in a place that breaks major contract stipulations, and with a chair who lies to me regularly and doesn't care when I find out.
I could sue or throw a hissy fit, but I fight only those battles I want to win, and I don't want to prolong the war. I know a quagmire when I see it. So I'll apply and go elsewhere, get a job in retail, or do whatever I need to do to get out.
My issue: I want to tell them exactly why I'm leaving (after, of course, the ink is dry on the next position). It gives me so much satisfaction to imagine saying, "I don't work with people who regularly lie to me." I have a whole little spiel in my head, even editing out the profanity.
Or I can just be a weenie and say "better fit" or "close to family" or "My partner hates this turd blossom of a landscape." The department is weak, and no one here will ever end up reviewing my grants or papers in the future. But do I tell it like it is? Or pursue the safe course and give a feeble excuse? I feel that they should know, so maybe they'll think twice before treating the next hire badly. On the other hand, their behavior is so ridiculous that I feel these people might just be unteachable. So can I tell them what I think?
Answer: At first it sounds like a marvelous scenario—colorful, dramatic, played with verbal verve (you) and shamed demeanor (them). It'll certainly be livelier than the final melancholy meetings of most academic years. You'll have said what's on your heart, and they'll see the light and mend their ways.
Except that the Bad Guys don't always know their lines.
So let Ms. Mentor pull away from the actor side and look at the accounting side, or the costs and benefits of telling Them off.
The costs include these:
- They may blackball or unrecommend you for future jobs, grants, or graduate-student recruitments.
- They may decide that you're unprofessional, because you don't seem to understand the coded language of academe. ("We were late with our contractual report" may mean "We needed to get better data to impress the dean, whose office finances us.")
- They will consider you a bully, a bitch, or both.
- They (or at least some of Them) won't ever like, trust, or respect you again.
- They may punish you in mean-girl ways (snubbing) or big-boy ways (snubbing). Being academics, they're not apt to get physical in their disdain.
- They may gossip about you, laugh about you, and spread childish rumors. Forever.
- You may undercut your own performance by tearing up, stumbling, or inadvertently rending your garment. (One researcher Ms. Mentor knows caught his lab coat in the door as he stalked out, fell to his knees, and looked pathetic.)
- You may not really feel better, just less wounded.
The benefits sound loftier:
- You'll have unburdened yourself. Confession is good for the soul.
- You'll have given them something to chew on.
- Your late father, that truculent man who never hesitated to express his opinion, would have been proud of you for finally "standing up to those bastards."
- You'll have given them the window of opportunity to do better with the next hire, since you're sure they want to be kind and nurturing to younger people.
- You'll have given them the benefit of your honesty, a truthful and sincere communication of what you really, really think.
- They'll be grateful for your candor, and they'll draw up a committee to put into effect the reforms you've suggested.
Ms. Mentor thinks that last item is highly unlikely, if not utopian. Most people, alas, are convinced that they are right, and few adults really change their behavior. The same celebrities check into rehab over and over again—and Ms. Mentor knows an eminent professor who's married three women named Nancy.
Unless it's criminal activity that lands people in jail, most adults don't have a strong incentive to change. Ms. Mentor would like to think that entrenched faculty members want young people to be happy and to succeed, as she does. But not all do.
If what you most want is to get your anger out of your heart and onto someone else's plate, then a confrontation will be good. But you may not feel better (people often don't), and you may do some mild harm to your own career. Nonachievers do have friends they chat with, including graduate-school buddies, Facebook friends, and former-students-turned-waiters. It's best to assume there are no secrets in the academic-professional world—and if you do leave your job, be sure to get on the grapevine, immediately, with your version: "I'm delighted to announce ..."
Ms. Mentor wouldn't spend her energies on fulminating about the past, but she's not you. And, of course, you're welcome to tell Ms. Mentor off, or where to go. She's been there. She comes back.
Question: Four years ago, I had a short but tempestuous affair with another junior colleague. Both of us are married. We agreed then that the whole thing was reckless and stupid, and have worked well (and professionally) with each other since then. I am positive no one in our department ever knew. Now I have tenure, and she's soon coming up for her departmental vote. Must I recuse myself from voting on her case? It is truly over and done with, and I feel I can be objective. If it makes a difference, she will almost certainly have a unanimous "yes" vote. I guess I just feel ethically troubled about voting on her case, but if I recuse myself, my other senior colleagues will certainly want to know why. It could be the gossip fest of the century. Should I tell, or come down with a sudden illness on the day of the vote, or just say yes?
Answer: Yes.
Sage readers: Ms. Mentor is polishing up her list of recommended academic novels for summer reading, and there are just a few days left for those who'd like to send nominations. Books by Amis, Hynes, Lodge, Russo, and Smiley are excluded (already in the hall of fame). Ms. Mentor especially welcomes lesser-known names and, of course, shocking revelations of all kinds.
As always, she invites queries, rants, and gossip, and regrets that she can rarely answer letters personally, and never speedily. All correspondence is confidential, and identifying circumstances are scrambled. Your colleagues may vaguely recognize their own missteps, but they won't know you're the one revealing their evil ways to the entire world.
