That's right, this misery is silverback related.
I have a clueless, useless colleague who is always so embroiled in various grants and club advisories, it's amazing. He can't teach worth a damn, and I doubt that's changed since he started, back when I was in diapers. He's always on some new idea that requires a grant, but he's so unfocused, it's all a big reach so he's always out grubbing for material.
A few years ago his thing was a remedial physical science class that he couldn't get anyone to teach - cue my Gum Drop Unicorn experience. Once one of his half-cocked projects gets off, he abandons everyone he's roped into helping, so I was verbally abused by math-phobic snowflakes who I suspect were feral humans bathed and put into clothes. And after I finished it for him, he wouldn't write me a recommendation for a position doing basically the same thing at another college because "I didn't technically see you teach."
He's working on some grant right now that he says he needs me to submit a portfolio for. I'm not doing that. I have nothing to do with his new project. The students in the club he's trying to get the grant for are ineligible for the class I teach that he wants to cite for the grant. The class he wants to cite is the fruits of another faculty member's grant writing and hard work. But she has tenure and would tell him to piss up a rope if he asked her, so he went after me. I found a way out of it by just pretending to believe he didn't know his students would be ineligible to take the course and repeating it after he didn't accept it (three times).
So the portfolio debate finally behind us, he's on to his next urgent request. Now all of the tutors for his tutoring center have quit, because he's so impossible to work for. So he asked me to find some new ones. And I did. And I have read receipts on the e-mails involved and my former students have told me he contacted them about it days ago. And he still has not said... Thank you.
You know what, jerk? People would help you out of your messes with less resentment if you learned those two fucking words. You wonder why you can start so much shit and never finish it. We wonder too. But maybe, just maybe, if you tried saying "Thank you." just ONCE, we'd help you finish what we helped you start.
I know your species is capable of grasping the concept because we all watched Koko prove it on tv. You can do better. And you should, or I swear to God I'm going to throw poo at you at your retirement party. If you ever have one, that is, you're probably the kind of pain in the ass who is never going to retire.
"Koko. That chimp's alright."
ReplyDeleteI recommend you use the old, "I'm too busy" excuse. It's always plausible, especially if you look like you're in the middle of something. Why not, since you can't get a letter of recommendation or even a "thank you" out of this jerk. There is a way to keep a silverback in line: find another, mightier, silverback, who is sympathetic to your cause.
ReplyDeleteToday I will start out my Intro-Astronomy-for-non-majors class with a clip from "2001: A Space Odyssey" that illustrates how this works, the one in which the apes are beating each other with bones, and then one throws a bone into the air and it turns into a spacecraft. (Yes, I know what kind of spacecraft it's supposed to be.) When I run the scene in which the apes are beating each other, I get a laugh by saying, "Now you get to see what goes on in a typical faculty meeting."
P.S. to Koko: A chimp isn't a gorilla, no more so than it is a monkey.
ReplyDeleteP.S. to Wombat: Isn't throwing poo considered an unnatural behavior, shown only by animals in captivity? I wouldn't do it at Chewbacca's retirement party: I'd just be glad the hairy old thing is going.