Our Lips Are Sealed

It's hard to know what the office rumors about yourself are since, if they are operating correctly, they are the thing everyone stops talking about immediately whenever you enter a room. They exist in a negative social space that manifests in the inverse of your actual physical presence, like the ghost of you that exists before you've had the courtesy to die.

Since I've been a supervisor, I've always assumed someone somewhere was saying something about me. I certainly bitched about my boss when I had a supervisor and continue to do so to this day, only now it's about a vice president of something or other. There are certain superficial aspects of your working life that will change depending upon your level within the bureaucracy, but there are some things that are comfortingly constant, like how 100% of the people you talk to are some combination of overworked/underpaid/unappreciated/the font of all solutions if only they were listened to in proportion to their prodigious ability. I have full confidence that Mr. Vice President that I report to has a daily surreptitious eye-roll or three at the expense of the president above him, and who in turn will on occasion have zero minutes to spend giving a fuck about whatever it is the company owner/CEO won't just get to the goddamned point about already.

We, all of us, work for idiots. It's as certain in American life as taxes, death and the Dodgers losing in the Division Series. It doesn't really matter what your level of respect is for your boss or how much you genuinely enjoy working for him/her,* man, if they'd just get their shit together on this one/a couple important/all aspect(s), your life would be so much simpler. Of course we have the option of pointing out exactly what that/those aspect(s) is/are, but the only thing worse than being annoyed by someone is knowing that they know exactly how they annoy you and them then actively deciding to make no effort to change or fix it. To be fair, though, it can be a tall order as usually the only feasible solution offered is "become a completely different person, please."

So I assume the people I supervise bitch about me, if/when I'm a topic of conversation at all. Or at least that whatever choices I make have left a kind of social and professional residue that others are able to pile up into a snowman version of me. But it's part of the understood contract between us that they pretend they're not saying it and I pretend I didn't hear any of it.

One of them broke the code last week, though, and gave me a little bit of a glimpse of what I look like from the outside. It's not something you always want to know. It's like seeing a picture of yourself that someone else took (people used to do that!) from an unfamiliar angle and being genuinely confused about who the fat bastard with the receding hairline, undeserving of human love is before realizing oh yeah, he's wearing my shirt and HEEEEYYYYyyyy...

When I started eight years ago, at minion level, I was part of a group that was six men and one woman. Since I became a manager (and hiring official) four years ago, we have evolved to the point where we are about to be seven women and four men (myself included). So the big rumor/conclusion that's been reached about me is: I don't like men. I find them intimidating, apparently.

I have to say, I feel pretty good about that.

I'm sure there are other rumors or characterizations to be discovered. And I guess if I pressed I could find out, but that feels a little thirsty to me. All I know is when the inevitable gynocracy gets here next year and they start to divide the men up into breed slaves and wine mules, I may have enough votes amongst our overladies to have my preferences considered.

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*Yeah, statistically still probably him.