The Bottom of the Cask is Dark
This afternoon, I was listening to one of my three bosses be rude and condescending to the only other low level employee besides me. The boss had done something sort of dumb, and the college kid working there had pointed this out, quite tactfully, I thought. But rather than admit he was wrong, the boss lit into the poor young man, which is generally his manner of communication. And I thought to myself, why is this okay?
As already indicated, sometimes I work in a museum. Other times I work in what we fondly call the “Real World”. I refer to the museum where I work as the “Island of Misfit Toys” because of the sorts of people who work there, but in my dual job mode, I’ve had to take a good look at the moniker I’ve bestowed. It seems like all museum interpretation departments have some kind of pet name for the dysfunctional environment where they work. We view our situation from the bottom of the barrel (or cask, as in this case we know from our museum work that a “barrel” is a unit of measurement, and the term “cask” refers to the generic shape) where we see the rest of our bottom-dwellers: pickles, salt pork, dustings of flour, or the sawdust packed around the bits of fine china. In fact, all of the pickles are more passionate, usually better educated, and obviously less well paid than the brine, garlic cloves, and peppercorns that float to the top, or in this analogy, the administration. And certainly that indefinable scunge that hovers above the pickles and below the peppercorns that we call middle management is something to take a good look at. Fortunately, this has already been done The Worst and Best Boss Ever so I will limit my diatribe. But only a little.
With only a few notable exceptions like the New Bedford Whaling Museum where independent creative thought is not only encouraged but expected, management in museum environments is intimidated by the underlings that outthink and outperform its members. This has a couple of outcomes. The first is that it supports a culture of bullies. Ironically, if you poll the museum underling staff, you will probably find that most of the members were, in fact, bullied in their youth, providing an enabling society. It can become a very volatile situation. Because a handful of us who were bullied as children are unwilling to take it anymore, and will call people on their actions. That is why some of us only work part time in the museum field now.
The other and related outcome is that you have a culture of managers (and some fickle underlings) who say things like, “Well, these people HAVE to work here, because they couldn’t survive in the real world.” There it is: The Real World. And with this rational, they are able to justify the mistreatment of their staff. I have aided them by giving them the name Misfits, though tongue in cheek. And I feel badly.
But because I have a job off island in the Real World, I can say that the Real Worlders couldn’t possibly survive in the museum world, because, by and large, they lack the passion and the knowledge that allow museum interpreters to interact everyday with the public in a usually thoughtful manner and do really challenging jobs, all the while not being paid a living wage. The other fact of the real world is that it is set up EXACTLY the same way as the museum world. Middle management has been promoted beyond their level of competence, and knowing this, bully their staff so that they can rationalize their position. Administration is so aloof that they are content to allow this to happen, as long as they don’t have to get their hands dirty. High staff turnover rates are shrugged off with the assurance that the bottom tier of staff is totally replaceable.
But at our museum, the tall ships are sinking, the engines don’t run properly, the once award-winning web site has been farmed out to an outside contractor and is often broken, the rigging is suspect because we have lost and not been able to replace our head shipwright, the head rigger, the leading web coordinator, the general authority on marine engines. Ironically, all of these people are making a living in the Real World. So I suspect it is probably projection on the part of management who are the ones who wouldn’t make it off island.
And in my cask in the Real World, there are only two of us little pickles left. The scunge and the pickling spices are taking up the rest of the space.
As already indicated, sometimes I work in a museum. Other times I work in what we fondly call the “Real World”. I refer to the museum where I work as the “Island of Misfit Toys” because of the sorts of people who work there, but in my dual job mode, I’ve had to take a good look at the moniker I’ve bestowed. It seems like all museum interpretation departments have some kind of pet name for the dysfunctional environment where they work. We view our situation from the bottom of the barrel (or cask, as in this case we know from our museum work that a “barrel” is a unit of measurement, and the term “cask” refers to the generic shape) where we see the rest of our bottom-dwellers: pickles, salt pork, dustings of flour, or the sawdust packed around the bits of fine china. In fact, all of the pickles are more passionate, usually better educated, and obviously less well paid than the brine, garlic cloves, and peppercorns that float to the top, or in this analogy, the administration. And certainly that indefinable scunge that hovers above the pickles and below the peppercorns that we call middle management is something to take a good look at. Fortunately, this has already been done The Worst and Best Boss Ever so I will limit my diatribe. But only a little.
With only a few notable exceptions like the New Bedford Whaling Museum where independent creative thought is not only encouraged but expected, management in museum environments is intimidated by the underlings that outthink and outperform its members. This has a couple of outcomes. The first is that it supports a culture of bullies. Ironically, if you poll the museum underling staff, you will probably find that most of the members were, in fact, bullied in their youth, providing an enabling society. It can become a very volatile situation. Because a handful of us who were bullied as children are unwilling to take it anymore, and will call people on their actions. That is why some of us only work part time in the museum field now.
The other and related outcome is that you have a culture of managers (and some fickle underlings) who say things like, “Well, these people HAVE to work here, because they couldn’t survive in the real world.” There it is: The Real World. And with this rational, they are able to justify the mistreatment of their staff. I have aided them by giving them the name Misfits, though tongue in cheek. And I feel badly.
But because I have a job off island in the Real World, I can say that the Real Worlders couldn’t possibly survive in the museum world, because, by and large, they lack the passion and the knowledge that allow museum interpreters to interact everyday with the public in a usually thoughtful manner and do really challenging jobs, all the while not being paid a living wage. The other fact of the real world is that it is set up EXACTLY the same way as the museum world. Middle management has been promoted beyond their level of competence, and knowing this, bully their staff so that they can rationalize their position. Administration is so aloof that they are content to allow this to happen, as long as they don’t have to get their hands dirty. High staff turnover rates are shrugged off with the assurance that the bottom tier of staff is totally replaceable.
But at our museum, the tall ships are sinking, the engines don’t run properly, the once award-winning web site has been farmed out to an outside contractor and is often broken, the rigging is suspect because we have lost and not been able to replace our head shipwright, the head rigger, the leading web coordinator, the general authority on marine engines. Ironically, all of these people are making a living in the Real World. So I suspect it is probably projection on the part of management who are the ones who wouldn’t make it off island.
And in my cask in the Real World, there are only two of us little pickles left. The scunge and the pickling spices are taking up the rest of the space.
posted by kingoftherabbits at
10:39 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home