Letters of praise

To the administrator who is too afraid of his own employees to effectively administrate:

When my friend scheduled an appointment with you to complain about her supervisor, my former supervisor, you must have been blindsided. I mean, the supervisor had gone through seven assistants in six years, but I was there for almost three years, so it must not have been so bad. And she was often abusive in department meetings, so much so that most people, including your own boss, refused to participate in those meetings, but come on, she couldn’t be that awful. And while she may have had a reputation on campus as a legendary bitch, well, reputations are often built on rumor, not fact. So when my friend came to you, and told you how it had really been working for her, how the woman had driven me away, how she was now abusing the new assistant, how she was ruining my friend’s career with unfair and overly critical performance reviews and personal attacks, how she wandered into the office hours late each morning, reeking of beer, what were you supposed to do about it? Deal with the supervisor? Ask her to change her behavior? Tell her to check into rehab? Ask her to step down? No. Not at all.

You did what any suit would do when faced with such a problem – you offered to reassign my friend to another department. And for not sugarcoating anything, for teaching my friend a cold, hard lesson about life and telling the legendary bitch who has been making my friend’s life a living hell that my friend, herself, requested the move, well, for that, sir, I salute you.


To the couple who came into the restaurant ten minutes before close last night:

I know what you were thinking: they’re not closed yet. Oh, and look, honey! There are no other cars in the parking lot! We’ll be able to get right in, and it will be quiet and romantic, and we’ll be able to sit and talk. But I also know what you weren’t thinking: Oh, they close in ten minutes. It will take us at least ten minutes to order because I don’t know what I want – Do you know what you want? And then it will take them another ten or so to cook the food and we’ll want salads and soup and that will add another ten and then we’ll want coffee after dinner and we’ll talk about our mundane lives for at least another twenty minutes while the waitstaff cleans up the place and then glares and plots our imminent demise, possibly by food poisoning, because by the time we finally get our overstuffed asses up and pay our check we will have held them up at least an hour when, since there are no cars in the parking lot NOW, it probably means they could go home to their beds just a few minutes after closing time, so maybe we should go to the Ihop down the street. They’re open all night.

For thinking the first thing, and not the second, you are my heroes. Thank you. Come again.


To the graduate student who was the last one admitted to the program, after everyone else had turned it down, and who nevertheless thinks she is the shit:

You are my favorite. I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but I do. Could this be because I have only seen the others one time each, and can not distinguish one from another, so you, by default, must be the favorite? Could it be that in the two weeks since you first stepped on campus, you have visited my office no fewer than twenty-nine times, and each time you make yourself at home, dropping your book bags on my floor and sinking back into the chair on the other side of the desk, ready to hang out like we are old friends? Or could it be that you keep me on my toes, that you apparently stay up into the wee hours, thinking up new and interesting ways to ask the same question again and again and again? Could it be because you were the only one with sense enough to complain about the unlockable drawer in the fourth generation desk in the makeshift GTA office space in what was formerly a hallway, when obviously we have so much more to offer you? Perhaps it is the fact that you helped me to be a better employee by going to one of my coworkers and then another coworker and finally my boss when I did not give you the answer you wanted.

Or it could be that today, while walking down the hallway with your employment packet in my hand, I found myself unable to stifle a sneeze, and when I had to use your paperwork to block the spray, I had a secret moment of perverse joy in an otherwise crappy day. For that, I thank you. Really.