(c) Melina Magdalena (2006)
Dog Bosses
The three most prominent bosses in my Life have all been Dogs, like me. It’s a sobering thought – I wonder what kind of boss I would make? Is it just the Dog’s typical opinion that no one could possibly do this job better than she could, if she could only be bothered, or summon up the energy to do everything herself? Is she grumpy because she can’t do everything and is forced to leave it to the plebs who – no matter how good they are, won’t do things completely the way she things they ought to be done? Does power necessarily corrupt even the most kind and loyal person? For a Dog therefore, self-employment would seem to the best option.
Top Dog No. 1
I met this man after completing my TAFE Certificate in Signwriting. Frustrated by my circumstances, being a mature-aged single mother whose circumstances seemed to prevent my entry into a profession that demanded single-minded dedication to the manufacture and installation of signage and allowed no competing demands, such as children or the need to feed them, he took me into his small workshop after I used a computer program I’d never seen before to create an image of a gingerbread man for a hypothetical bakery sign.
I worked for him for almost twelve months, and finally left after he took on the latest of a string of apparent prodigies, all men, who invariably disappointed him. He hadn’t really noticed me, working feverishly in the background of his business, learning everything I could, and begging to be given more interesting and complex tasks to do. His wife, who also worked there, was a vicious, jealous, spiteful bitch who finally accused me of theft and deception. Nothing injures a Dog’s pride more than to be falsely accused of dishonesty. I left feeling quite the sucker, wondering what the point of that exercise had been.
As well as his cultivating his prodigies, Top Dog No. 1 was a notorious namedropper. I've come to think this must be a Dog trait. He cultivated relationships with small business and large business, and had a wide network of so-called friends for whom everything he did was presented to them as a personal favour. Yet behind his back they talked and sniggered and readily acknowledged that they were players in his game. Never mind - they got what they wanted, and he got to feel like the emperor of his small domain.
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Top Dog No. 2
This Dog was my University lecturer and supervisor. I knowingly took on a protégée role, and perceived him to be quite the father figure. He saw himself as the lynch pin in a vast network of youngish women (we had to have attained a certain amount of education before joining his parade) who worked on his projects for no credit and who had (as I discovered) no academic future.
It was my understanding that hierarchy amongst academia was to be avoided as presenting a false picture of the greater whole that was the sum of the different parts we played. Besides, the Great Professor had so little support – how could he be expected to keep up his end of the work we were doing, when he himself was only a two-fingered typist at best, and was confounded and frustrated when the computers refused to do what he demanded?
The Great Professor worried and whined continuously about his professorial salary and superannuation, while I continued to struggle daily to afford bus tickets to be able to get to work. He grumbled about lack of funding, lack of grants, lack of equipment; bitched about the lack of secretarial support, lack of space and lack of university recognition. I took on his complaints and made them my own – tried the best I could to alleviate them. More fool I.
It was my mistake in believing that by working for him, my abilities were being stretched and nurtured so that the wings I was growing would set me into full flight upon research of my own.
I began to feel exploited when I began to see the repeated patterns of promised contracts to continue to do this work that came to nothing. I assisted him for three years in a row to prepare grant applications for grand projects that would employ me on a three-year research contract. As a casual employee, I had no status, no sick leave, and no holiday pay. If I refused work because of school holidays, I made do with my Centrelink payment and hoped he hadn’t replaced me during my absence.
As I became more vocal with my demands and needs, I was relegated to an obscure project that no one else wanted to work on. The Great Professor never gave me a contract. He continues to employ youngish women to work on his exciting projects, and expected me to train them up to be able to do their work on equipment that was hopelessly inadequate to the demands that were being placed upon it. This was our fault, of course – if we wanted to, we could make it work.
The scales finally fell from my eyes and I finally saw what I was – just a simple cog in the machinery of the Great Professor’s universe; a cog that would be replaced in due course by some other youngish, able, needy woman who would do her duties for as long as she could stand herself in the subjugated role, going nowhere very fast.
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Top Dog No. 3
I have to wonder about my meandering career path sometimes. I’ve left no gingerbread crumb trail to lead me home again, and probably haven’t peed on enough signposts, either. From tradesperson to academic was almost a horizontal kind of movement; I now work in office administration, which even I perceive to be down several rungs on the ladder of success. The pay is as low as ever, and the trade-off in mental health has been severe. I suffer from the effects of misplaced, abused fanaticism no less than everybody else in our office, and have begun to wonder when the rewards will start kicking in.
A woman this time, whose adherents are fanatical in the loyalty she exacts. No sense in calling her behaviour sexist: although she is hopelessly entangled in attempting to divorce the master’s tools from the master’s house, she happily uses those tools to demolish those around her, whom she perceives as threats to her empire.
There are no boundaries, no limits and no logic to the construction of her complex world, but I have slowly come to see where I fit within the whole. This boss excels in setting up personal connections with everyone in her world, and speaking of each and every one as though she is privy to their most personal secrets, but she persists in believing that having set up these relationships, she can drop names, throw switches, push buttons and pull strings to her heart’s content, and we will all come running to do whatever she demands. (Believe me – we do our best, because there is nothing better than the feeling we get when she lavishes praise for our efforts.)
I suppose it is logical to assume that despite the display of egalitarianism in terms of being able to relate on a personal level with everyone in her world, this boss also has a tensile strength notion of hierarchy and where we are all situated on her totem pole. Moreover, this in itself determines the strength of our personal connection with her, and what we can expect in what she demands of us.
My servile position is particularly painful, because this boss is simultaneously run by her subconscious hidden agenda, which directly affects the way she treats me. Because I am both competent and compliant, she tells herself that I am the one with the hidden agenda, when all I want, is to belong. I want is to do a good job. And I want is to be treated fairly. The fact is, I do a good job, and I am as fanatical in my loyalty as any other of her minions.
Unhappily, I am in admin, and she in academia, and in her mind at least, never the twain shall meet. As is my wont, I was rather slow on the uptake. It has taken me ages to accept the evidence that I do not, will not, can not belong to her pack. I will ever be the faithful slobbering servant, backtracking, begging and working like a dog to please her, but I will always be an outsider.
That hurt, particularly as I was brought into my role as a person who because of my past experiences, could straddle both worlds effectively and work to build bridges between them. Over the years, this boss has alienated numerous admin people, and I have just become the latest feather in her cap.
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Walking The Dog
My needs have finally risen to the fore once more. I need to feel valued. I need to be acknowledged. I need to be treated with kindness. I need to be allowed to express (and not repress) my emotions. I need to surround myself with people who see me and treat me as a person like them. I need to belong. I don’t need this anglified colonised stratified class system, which is obscured by the false social niceties that do nothing to relieve me of the feeling that I am inadequate and will be judged as never having done anything worth remembering.
I also know exactly where my bosses have been coming from. They are all nice people. I hated having to hurt them. I hated having to admit to myself that I couldn't stand to be around them anymore.
Like my bosses, I also cultivate relationships with those around me. I nurture those personal connections, and actively seek to build on them. I love the intrigue of seeing the way that people interact. People are my favourite pastime. I watch the circus of life with endless fascination. But observer status is just fine with me. I don't seek to be the one to control or determine. I believe people are natural self-determiners.
As a Dog, I know that I am incapable of toeing anyone’s line. It is not within my nature to permit others to determine my journey. I will strain at every leash and snap at every hand that tries to collar me. Nor does the irony escape me - as Miranda Priestly remains eternally disappointed by her assistants, I seem to remain eternally disappointed by my bosses.
