Revenge of the Tired

Today is the first installment of Sam Pinto and Jamie Taylor’s new advice column: “mid. advice for and from tired midlife feminists.” Do you want advice about being stuck in the mid? Do you not care about advice but want some solidarity? Submission details below!

“I have had three incidents with a colleague over the course of two years and I am still fuming.“

Q: I am an adjunct professor at a local college. I teach 1-3 classes every semester, and I come in, teach, and leave. In other words, I don’t really work with colleagues, although I see familiar faces and say hello in the hallway before my classes start. Classrooms are shared among faculty, so the general rule is that you leave the classroom the way you found it–lights off, whiteboard clean, computer off, door locked. Many classrooms share walls. I have had three incidents with a colleague over the course of two years and I am still fuming.

First–when I was teaching a class, I turned a short video on at a reasonable volume. My male colleague was teaching a speech class next door and could apparently hear it. In the middle of my class, he opened my door and yelled “SPEECHES” at me like I am a dog and slammed the door. I was deeply embarrassed and pissed to be yelled at, especially in front of students. I finished class, and went to go find him but could not. So I told my department chair (also a dude) who listened but didn’t offer any comment and as far as I can see did not do anything.

Second–several weeks later, my colleague saw me in the hallway and asked me to leave the computer on when I was done teaching. I said that I can but we have some issues to talk about, and while I was in the middle of my sentence, he WALKED AWAY. I scurried after him, still talking and he turned his head and yelled, “It’s just COMMON COURTESY!”   I sent him an email, copied to my department chair, that he is not to speak to me again because he has been sexist and beyond disrespectful. No response from either my dept. chair or my colleague, whom I now call Common Courtesy.

Third–after the summer, the next semester started. I was in a new classroom. I often stop class about 15 minutes before the official end, but I stay for the next 15 minutes to finish up work. (Adjuncts don’t have any office space to use.) Common Courtesy came into the classroom and saw me, dropped his brown bag lunch on a desk and slammed the door on the way out. I finished up my work, turned off the lights and the computer, grabbed his lunch and dumped it in a garbage can in the hallway. None of my responses were very satisfying (although trashing his lunch was by far the most satisfying) and he has suffered no consequences for treating me with such abject disrespect. Is there anything I can or should do? It’s been a couple of years at this point.

J:  YOU THREW AWAY HIS LUNCH.  Feminist revenge!  A long and storied tradition.  In homage to Dolly, I just rewatched 9 to 5, the ultimate feminist revenge movie – which is why that movie is so, so satisfying.  The really gross dude is sent away, and feminist work reforms are enacted!  The sweet relief of catharsis.

S:  I rewatched 9 to 5, too!  Had to show my kiddos. Seriously, though this is like the mid. version of a Taylor Swift song– or an academic “Goodbye Earl.” WE HAVE ALL BEEN THERE.  I once walked into a class on the first day of the semester only to encounter an older gentleman already there with the room set up.  I showed him that this was my room number.  He asserted that he had checked multiple times and I was wrong.  Reader, I called the folks in charge of classrooms, and he was wrong. His response: “Possession is 9/10ths of the law.” He said this. To my face. 

J:  Unlike Dolly Parton, you don’t have Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in your corner. You have your rude colleague and your anemic department chair. In other words, you have institutional authority but not IRL community.

S: Throwing out the lunch is satisfying– a term my children LOVE and I’ve come to feel it describes so much.  It’s a  autonomy-restoring response instead even if doesn’t get rid of the soul-sucking, when-will-I have-to-encounter-this-again feeling.  Or the weird I-shouldn’t-be-embarrassed-but-I-totally-am-because-why-does-he-feel-like-he-can-talk-to-me-like-this feeling, even if you know why.  It’s structural and beyond you. But still:  mortification.

J:  Is it mortification, though?  I hope you’re not internalizing this dude’s rudeness.  My reaction is incandescent rage, which I can’t express so I just endlessly produce confrontations in my head where I say the right thing in the right way at the right time and get accolades for my dignified but terrifying response.  I can spend hours doing that.

S:  Oh, I am and I do– that’s the worst part!  It gives me agita. And sometimes it can feel like the there’s only one right feminist way to deal with this, through that system of official complaint that offers no satisfaction. But our friend here has taken action for the lunch that was given to her and made lemonade by throwing it in the trash, literally and metaphorically! 

J:  Yes!  Trash all of his lunches!  Take away his sustenance (his joy at yelling at female colleagues).  Sara Ahmed’s great book, Complaint!, makes this point – in a hostile environment, you have to throw a wrench in the machine so it stops  working, because the machine will always try to keep the machine going.  The trashed lunch is the wrench in the machine. 

S:  What’s satisfying can look different than a one-size-fits-all governance/consequences model. And you are resisting, which doesn’t stop it from eating you up, but at least it fills the hole a little by making yourself heard. It’s not totalizing closure, but it also doesn’t prolong and expand the torture of not being seen by the official system that has never once or yet recognized your dignity.

J: I say give yourself cathartic satisfaction since you’re not going to get institutional satisfaction.  Nothing violent or criminal, of course.  Maybe you lock his classroom door so he has to call maintenance to let him in.  Maybe you schedule a really loud movie viewing on a day you know he has SPEECHES going on.  Maybe you take all the whiteboard markers with you when you leave.  And definitely always throw away his lunch.

S: And listen to 9 to 5 on the way home and cackle with your people after.  RIP, Dolly!

Want to share your mid story or ask/vent through a mid question?  Do you want to find some folks in the same professional (head)space?  Talk to us here or follow us on Instagram.

Who we are:

Jamie is an underslept professor, parent, author, bureaucrat, Little League snack-bringer and endless car-pooler.  She writes to-do lists on scraps of paper and leaves cold mugs of half-drunk coffee everywhere.

Sam is a professor, author, journeywoman editor & administrator, parent, partner, peer text friend, & overall tired human. She plans to be more interesting as soon as she gets her inbox count down.

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