A Dog's Life (part two)
(c) Melina Magdalena (2006)
**I saw Meryl Streep on the Golden Globes last night and thought it was high time I published the second part of this piece. Stay tuned for Part Three "Dog Bosses".**
The Dog's Breakfast
The idea for this piece came after I watched The Devil Wears Prada, a movie surely made by a woman, with its concentration on relationships and the odd tidbit of womanly concern such as the Take Back the Night article Andy wrote while still at college. I watched the movie and thought – I’ve had bosses like Miranda Priestly. Men and women for whom others go to extraordinary lengths to please; and bosses who never seem to be pleased by what their minions do in an effort to please them. “I’m always so disappointed by my assistants…” Meryl Streep breathes in this movie, in an icy, understated manner that speaks volumes for how little she esteems those assistants who disappoint her.
I began to think about the bosses I have had; ringleaders in circuses of their own creation; small empires with an astounding rate of production and a distressingly high rate of burnout and turnover of circus hands. I’ve played the oblivious, too-earnest clown in such circuses for years before realizing I was being abused and taken for granted simply because I was doing the job I’d been employed to do. Somehow, my seriousness was misplaced. I showed too little resistance, simply believing that by refusing to engage in the power games, I would be left alone to do my work.
I try to work from the premise that the small parts that I am doing are necessary and important to the whole, and that I will eventually be properly acknowledged for my part in it. Eventually, like Andy in the movie, I begin to see the flaws in the universe of my bosses’ grand schemes. I begin to look at the grimaces behind the socially acceptable greasepaint they wear on their implacable faces, and to see the pretty backdrops for what they really are – wallpaper that covers the cracks of their exploitative practices. Their worlds are stratified, and I am forever the sidekick, the funny, earnest pleb who works until she drops, and then struggles back to her feet after being kicked in the teeth for her inadequate efforts. Eventually I explode and leave, disappointed yet again by lack of recognition and intolerable work conditions.
It’s a pattern I’m not particularly proud of.
