Another unpleasant meeting

“CD.” I prompted when Boss looked at me blankly as I stood in his office.

“Oh,” He jumped up and walked into his secretary’s outer office, “I think I put it out here for you.” He'd picked something up for me and offered the data before I left for a meeting. When hearing I'd be out of the office for the next couple hours, he asked if he could take a look until I got back.

“Thanks.” I kept my voice flat, feelings carefully hidden as I finally neared the end of a too-busy, too-many-mistakes, too-many-people-being-mean day. I don’t cry in front of people and wasn’t about to break the pattern with poor Boss. It would have made him terribly uncomfortable.

“How’d the meeting go?” He ventured carefully, looking at me with some concern.

“Fine.” I nodded, still refusing to meet his eyes for very long.

We had done an experiment yesterday, working for 5 hours on a Sunday afternoon with various technical and clinical staff. As we waited for several data acquisitions, the six men and I spent some time talking. The conversation turned to various testing mechanisms to receive certification in my field and, as I came from a highly-respected graduate program, I was asked when I was planning to test.

“Oh, no.” I said without thinking, shaking my head firmly. I glanced up to several sets of raised eyebrows and I looked at Boss before elaborating.

“We took a practice test in grad school – the end of my second year, I think. There were four professors in the room for the oral exam and it was hideous. I don’t go into exams or meetings unprepared.”

I paused, looking at Boss and expecting his nod of agreement. After noting its appearance, I frowned, remembering. “I knew the material for that exam. I really thought I did. And I liked the men administering it. So we started talking and they kept interrupting me! Moving on to the next topic before I could tell them what I knew about the one they just asked. It didn’t take them too long to find something with which I wasn’t overly familiar and they picked at it. Just kept asking the same questions over and over after I’d answered them as best I could. I felt awful. I cried after I left – the only time I think I cried on campus in grad school – and decided I’d never take the official exams.”

“Who were the professors?” One man asked, a higher-up in the field at my current institution. I passed along their names and watched him nod with a smirk. “I wouldn’t worry about it.” He offered. “Take the test – you’ll do fine. They’re just…like that.”

“But he berated me.” I said, shaking my head. “Told me I should know the material. Why didn’t I know this better? I really should be showing more aptitude than I was. I should be rather embarrassed. Well, I was more miserable than embarrassed, but if feeling badly was the goal, then they definitely accomplished that.”

“There’s no reason for that.” Boss said. “Constructive criticism is one thing, but making people feel badly is another.” Then he shook his head in disapproval.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern. And patterns deserve recognition.

As I turned to walk back to my office this afternoon, leaving Boss standing with some confusion in Jill’s office, he called my name as he followed me down the hall.

“What happened?” He asked, growing more concerned.

“I just…” I said, stopping to take a breath. We do not cry in front of our kindly boss, I reminded myself gently. No tears. Just speak. “I’m not so good at taking criticism. It has to be delivered very kindly and with useful suggestions.” I said. “I just…take things personally. I feel attacked and pathetic and it’s kind of awful.”

He nodded sympathetically and waited for me to continue. I made a face, feeling like I was tattling, then decided talking couldn’t hurt. This does appear to be a problem for me and I don’t know that I’ll find a better mentor than Boss. So I wanted – in some sense – to see what he thought.

“Leo was aggressive. No, he was mean. Condescending and critical and mean. He just was so obviously unimpressed – with eye rolls and scoffing and everything! – that I started to feel really badly about myself. About this project. So now I’m sad.” I finished and shrugged, looked down to blink back tears.

Arousing protective instincts – as is my habit – he offered to speak to Leo. One of the LBSCPBs, Leo had always struck me as highly critical. And he was incredibly smart – no question. But his particular style didn’t work for me. I shrink in the face of that kind of analysis.

“I still haven’t heard a hypothesis.” He had interrupted my explanation of my work in the meeting. “Did I not ask her for a hypothesis?” He asked the room in general, leaving me to blink with surprise that he’d be so obviously rude in front of people.

Earlier, he’d pointed at me (and who points?! It’s something we’ve even taught Little One not to do as it’s Not Polite.) and spoke sternly. “One thing I need to do is figure out what you want. I haven’t heard of this project and I should have been kept aware.”

Instead of raising an eyebrow in some gesture of vague curiosity as to why he’d be kept in the loop when he didn’t belong there, and saying, “Go for it.” I nodded wordlessly. I just…fade when threatened. Become small and still and try not to attract attention. Only when it becomes unavoidable will I attempt to fight back.

“I haven’t seen the IRB protocol,” Another meeting attendee said later as he attempted to clarify a point, and he was also interrupted as Leo said, “Well, who has?” in his most sarcastic tone. He’d earlier called one of my statements ‘ludicrous’ and done more eye rolling.

Of course, he’d also made rude statements about others in the general research group. When asked if a student named Julie was also working on a project he’d mentioned assigning to Ralph in the future, he snorted and said he wanted something actually useful at the end. The woman seated to his left met my eyes and shook her head upon hearing his response.

The problem (disclaimer: the views expressed here are not shared or endorsed by my employer, supervisor, department, etc. I write and embellish in my personal time from home. And, as always, my perspective could be wrong.) is not that Leo is an asshole. There are people – in the biomedical field, science in general, the academic world at large, Earth as a whole – who are not nice. There are then those of us who can be careless or oblivious or slip and make mistakes that hurt other people. But when faced with hurt feelings, there is the question of how I control them. React from those situations where I find myself wounded and sad.

I do not consider having Boss step in on my behalf a suitable option at this stage of my career.

“No, no.” I shook my head and smiled my thanks. “Don’t say anything to him. It’s OK. I just need to handle myself a bit better, I think.”

“I don’t know why there are people who do that.” He said. “There’s no reason everyone can’t be happy and productive. I don’t know if it’s an extension of a personal problem or some unhappiness that causes people to lash out in meetings – make other people miserable – or if it’s just a personality trait. But it shouldn’t happen. We want everyone to be happy.”

“Even me.” I said, smiling at him. He put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed.

“Especially you.” He said firmly, releasing me with a reassuring pat. “It’s good work, Katie. It’s in early stages, but it’s well planned and well written. I saw the final version of your paper – congratulations! That’s great and you should be happy. Don’t let people ruin that. Take what you can from what he said, and try to forget about the rest.”

I did. I am. I dropped off my notebook and picked up my bag, then walked out to the parking lot. I took deep breaths, considered that the people who offend me also tend to bother other people, and realized that I made it out of the meeting with some dignity regardless of my bruised ego.

“It’s still immediately bad.” I told Dr. Counselor this morning. We talked through work and family and friendships, then decided we’d start meeting every other week. I’m doing better now – I don’t need him as much as I did. “But I can control it. I understand where the fear comes from. I can dial it back if I work at it. There’s still the instant anxiety and depression, but I can move through it and past it. I think I’m doing OK.”

But it’s a process.