[Edits done 3/17/13. More edits 3/26/13.]
Subsections below:
Simple career-derived sources of my attitude toward C.J., and of other
student managers’ attitudes
The nature of the MC, and C.J.’s job as I understood it then
C.J. as a sales-oriented type
The noxiousness of the sales mentality, as I’ve understood it in recent
years, outside the MC
The MC’s mission, oriented to service, limited sales nonsense
“C.J.” is an interesting topic.
She was probably the most puzzling or criticism-attracting functionary in the
MC administration at the time, and a number of us underworkers—whether student
managers, a staff lower-level weekend manager like me, or more long-term
staffers—made critical comments about her (with or without varying levels or
types of humor) as if she was a perpetually erratic character. Today, I think I
understand more of what her job was about, but that’s because what she was
supposed to do wasn’t something I was apt to fully understand due to how I’ve
pursued my career over many years, and more generally it wasn’t something
younger (student) workers were apt to understand due to their dedication to
some notion of authenticity and to attention to detail.
Simple career-derived sources of my attitude toward C.J., and of other
student managers’ attitudes
Fellow student managers’ views
of C.J. would intrigue you, but I have to approach this from my angle first.
How did my own career direction
affect my view of her? First, what I’m talking about wasn’t a consciously
chosen direction: I mean (over the very long term, including well after my MC
years) being a supportive “player” in a service or media-related entity whose
preferred, and “defined by others,” capacity was largely in attending to behind-the-scenes,
craft-oriented details.
When I started my
“participation” in the arts in high school, particularly in “Stage Tech” as the
department/semi-club was called, I wanted to participate in the putting on of a
school play, but I knew I didn’t have the stuff for appearing on stage; partly
for very entrenched personal reasons (which I would grow out of, in part), I
wasn’t “front and center” material. And I grew quickly to value the role of
working behind the scenes—helping construct scenery, moving pieces of scenery
around during a play, helping with lighting details. This taught me an
invaluable lesson in understanding that it took some noodges in the back, in
the shadows, who did a lot of the dog work to make a show happen.
Anyone can appreciate this today
when he or she sees 10 minutes of movie credits and realizes it took a lot of
unsung craftspeople and behind-the-scenes types to make it possible for Daniel
Day-Lewis or Meryl Streep to appear on screen at all. (And all this description
of what I learned to value is something I can say in retrospect; by no means
did I think, in 1982 or so, that I wanted a career mainly in technical or
craft-level support for some form of the arts.)
For a wide array of student workers,
working at the MC tapped the same propensities and sense of values. When you
worked as a student manager, you provided a lot of technical backup for events
that were happening there: meetings of clubs, karate groups practicing, dances,
concerts, what-have-you. You had to set up a P.A. system, provide lights,
attend to the fact that the arrangement of furniture that was specified in
plan-like material you got at the start of your shift. This material was
usually written out by Jim Pritchett, whose job description defined that he
worked under C.J. Because all the student managers—most of whom were just
students working a part-time job there, and most of whom had no intention of
pursuing any sort of career at the MC—had to focus on, and came to value, this
attention to detail, that shaped the set of values from which they would opt to
criticize anyone in upper management who fairly routinely might have not come
through entirely with their work in the issue at hand. And this explains how
students’ authenticity and details-oriented sides came into play in criticizing
C.J.
The nature of the MC, and C.J.’s job as I understood it then
Another factor that determined
C.J.’s work was the nature of the MC. As I started to explain in the first
installment of this series, the MC wasn’t just a student union, there only for
serving students. It also hosted outside groups—regularly convening groups from outside the GWU system,
but who may have had participants who were GW students (which I think, though
I’m not sure, was the case with the several karate groups that regularly
practiced there). It could host groups that had conferences, and even such an
entity as a TV network that would host a live TV event there, as happened in
1985 with Ted Koppel’s special “Viewpoint” show that occasionally appeared
under the umbrella of his regular Nightline
show. So along with being a student union, the MC was a sort of conference
center, or “convention hall” of a sort, that sought outside “customers” as well
as served the students. This is roughly speaking, based on my experience of the
place for years as an underworker. Whether this mixed function was used to help
bring in revenue to the school (not just the MC), I’m not fully sure, but it
wouldn’t surprise me. [Update on this last sentence: I can only speculate on the revenue-generating side of the MC, but it's possible some of it was for paying off the mortgage that could well have been taken out to pay for the construction of the MC.]
C.J.’s role, as I was aware of
it at the time, was as a sort of liaison of the administrative office to a
variety of groups (within GWU or not) who might require certain
accommodations—some arrangement of technical support, a use of a particular
room or facility, or some measure of publicity or the like—and bring requests for
these to C.J. in broad terms. C.J., in turn, would pass on the requirements to
Jim Pritchett, who would essentially determine the specifics of what was
needed. For night events (and even day ones, which I had much less exposure
to), it was up to us student managers and assistant managers to execute the
specifics’ being in place. [Update: Another problem was more within the details-oriented side of C.J.'s department: simple errors in scheduling of events. On occasion, two events could be scheduled for the same location at the same time, which was an obvious, embarrassing error. And we night managers were often the ones who had to rectify things here, when two groups might have been waiting to use the same space. This sort of problem was part of the rationale for getting a computer to handle scheduling at the MC. I'll say more about this in Part 13.]
In the abstract, this all seems
pretty simple. But it’s amazing how many times this did not come off as it
should. The most frequent problem, as I try to summarize a phenomenon from
about 30 years ago (my memory slightly rusty), is that C.J. neglected to tell
Jim Pritchett something, or didn’t follow through on some “customer” request,
or made a “customer” some promise that couldn’t quite be fulfilled as requested
(I’m a little unsure about this last one, but it seems to make sense in the
context). Sometimes it was Jim P., working as he typically did during the day,
who tried to iron out the problem if he became aware of it in time. But at
least as frequently, we ground-level nighttime managers, when a “customer”
group was there about to start an event and was looking for X that wasn’t
there, had to work out the problems that C.J.’s negligence or mistakenness
had wrought.
I remember that a number of us
low-level types would talk about, “What [in general terms] did C.J. do? What
was her job?” In such instances she was regarded as someone who bumbled a lot more
often than one would have liked in her position. As a personality, she could be
charming and good-humored, and other times she could be angry and cross. I
think there was an extent to which you didn’t know at times whether you’d get
the friendly C.J. or the angry one. She had certain quirks such as to preface her
response (comprising a set of comments) to someone else, whether in a meeting
or not, with “Two things:….” She was
not an intellectual giant, but when she was on her game, she was capable
enough. As I said in the first part, she was a single mother, so this may have
played a role in some of her performance (though it wouldn’t have excused major
errors).
It’s possible racism on the
parts of a very few coworkers played a bit of a role in how (white)
underworkers regarded her, but I don’t think this was terribly significant. One
of the glorious things about the MC was that there was a wide range of ethnic
and racial types there—who were working there, or present as students or others
using the facilities—and we were in a cosmopolitan city like Washington, D.C., so
there were generally no racist attitudes. In a university setting, it was a
place in which to make the most of “It’s a small world, after all,” and realize
“Everyone can get along.” And several staffers of the MC administration were
Black, as was C.J. But also, some of the criticism of her, as I recall (it was
usually “forbearing” or the like), came from her fellow Black administrative
coworkers.
C.J. as a sales-oriented type
Today, I would say that what I
did not appreciate about C.J., as a function of my level of understanding as a
late-teen and early-twenty-something, and as I have learned about from
witnessing many times since (at numerous employers long after the MC), is that
she was a sales type.
If I were to say that a sales
type was the following way—given to broad descriptions of what she can deliver;
apt to give warmly delivered promises; presenting dazzle; really all about
welcoming customers in (“and we’ll worry about the details later”)—this all
would describe not only the sales mentality I’ve seen for years now, but it
would describe C.J.
She had, you might say, a sort
of impresario aspect to her role, even though she really was supposed to make
arrangements for MC “customers” in terms of facilitating arrangement of specific provisions for them (AV
support, furnishings, etc.). At times she seemed like a superfluous player in
the administrative staff—though she would never have granted that—and yet she
could be rather imperious asserting herself in her role, and sometimes showed
that she didn’t have a (full) sense of humor about herself while others had one
about her (others didn’t show this to her face, generally; and actually, some
of the humorous attitudes were not the sort of thing she would have shared
anyway). (It’s funny: as I write this, it seems to spell out a certain pattern
of psychological deviancy, of a type I’ve encountered a little too often in the
media world.)
There are two types of
professionals I’ve witnessed in action in many instances, and never wanted to
be: lawyers and salespeople. Lawyers comprise an interesting area: I almost
went to law school—I was accepted to Boston University Law School and even got
a partial scholarship to go (I say today still, the best career move I ever made was not to become a lawyer). And
not only have I seen lawyers in action at town meetings many times, but over
many years I have had to do my own legal work, in representing my interests in
unemployment hearings, traffic court, municipal-government situations, a state
Superior Court domestic abuse issue (where I was a witness), and a Superior
Court lawsuit, among other things. I have written legal-type documents (such as
letters with rigorously referred-to exhibits) to state government entities and
federal government entities. I think it’s very important as an American citizen
to learn how the legal system works to the extent you need to for your own
purposes.
But I’ve also found that lawyers
can be aloof, self-serving, self-congratulatory, and in general not “there” as
much for someone like me who has encountered the type of problems I have
repeatedly in New Jersey. So I both learn how to “be my own lawyer,” and
respect the system and its ideals and purpose, and also have long-developed and
solidly based contempt for how badly some lawyers can act sometimes—which in my
mind happens a little too often in this society.
Lawyers, when they do their jobs
right, are something to respect. My view of salespeople is much different. I
think you have to know you want to do sales from an early age. It’s like becoming
a minister or some kind of arts person where dedication becomes a major anchor
for your pursuing the field at all. But, of course, the way sales roles are so
often structured, a salesperson gets “immediate gratification” for making a
sale: make a sale, and you get a
commission, percentage, or whatever. No one does sales on shaky contingency or
as a speculative venture.
And to me, a lot of sales types
are glorified party animals and prom king-or-queen types, or not-so-secret
drunks. I feel, if you are such a person and want to be in sales, go ahead. But
I would never become that—and the older I get, the more I realize you can’t go
into that field after you’ve been in the financially self-depriving minister-like
field that I’ve been in so long.
The noxiousness of the sales mentality, as I’ve understood it in recent
years, outside the MC
What is especially disturbing,
to me, is not simply a matter of “to each his own” for a career: it is a matter
of the tendencies or prerogatives of one style of work’s improperly infringing
on those of a very different one. Particularly, what I mean is the sales
mentality shaping an area of science—yes, science (such as in health care)—where
craftsmanly care and strict attention to detail are paramount.
It has only been in recent years
that the sales mentality’s being inimical to the type of values that my own
decades-long line of work centers on has become particularly conspicuous. If
you abstract the worst tendencies inherent in sales types vis-à-vis the
“noodgy” values and prerogatives of a copy editor/proofreader, they would be
these: (1) the tendency to make big promises, in very broad-brushed,
sunny-skied terms, of what can be delivered to a client; (2) an almost
pathological inattention to details, especially when attending to those details
is crucial to what you would think the client would expect as implied by the
big promises; and (3) a sort of contempt for the craft-level person who has to
deliver in relation to all the details—an attitude that implies the craft
person is an expendable little trained squirrel who might complain about the
ludicrously unrealistic position he or she has been put in by the broader
process put into motion by the big-promises sales type, but who “can always be
replaced,” or who “fails to see the big picture, and [implicitly] remember the big numbers of money the
account represents (which are so important to the company), and the
imperatives of staying within budget”—all sorts of things that a details person—who
has been in the field probably much longer than the more “newbie” sales types—can
readily appreciate.
Where do you see this kind of
cavalier, proto-delusional mentality among sales types, which seems to flout
the good sense and gripes of the detail-level person? In medical advertising
and promotions.
Here’s a metaphor from a whole
different area. One time someone told me the semi-tragedy of how race horses
are bred (whether she knew this as factual or it was just her interpretation as
a layperson, I don’t know, but she seemed to know horses): the horses are bred
to have lighter bones, so they can carry their weight at high speeds more
easily, but of course they are also meant (bred and trained, I would assume) to
have strong muscles. You get into a situation where the strong muscles and
light bones are at cross-purposes, and this puts the horse at greater liability
to break a leg or such. Hence the sad eventualities of race horses’ breaking
legs seemingly more easily than we might expect.
Well, a medical-ad/promo firm is
about the same: it is “bred” to have
“strong sales muscles,” but it goes “light” on having (for given projects, in
the crush of sudden arrangements) a realistic number of details/craft-level
people, or in budgeting enough time for them to do their work; the net result
is a tension (sometimes on the bitter side) between the sales types and the
craft types. Guess whose prerogatives always seem to be defended, and who
always (in the nearer term, at least) “wins”? The sales types. After all, these
firms are all about sales, not about crafting
durable, reliable products.
The MC’s mission, oriented to service, generally limited sales nonsense
The MC was not like this, in the
sense that we managers who had to provide for student groups, outside
organizations having special events, and so on knew that the details of what we
did were essential, not frivolous. For student workers, being able to get the
hands-on work done to criteria was about as expected and necessary as being
able to bus the table if (in a random restaurant) you were a busboy, or serving
the ice cream if your summer job had you do that at the shore. The Marvin
Center was a considerably higher-tech, busier type of student job.
C.J., also, wasn’t so cavalier
and contemptuous of us lower-level workers as sales types could be (as I would
find many years later) in non-university, purely commercial advertising/promotion
firms. I think she knew that she was as much “about” being part of the team
that provided back-up for events as were those of us who set up the equipment,
etc.
