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by Bonnie Durrance
I am backstage in the theater of a respected museum installing a slide show. It is a tense moment. The opening is tomorrow, and one — but we don't know which one — of the nine projectors is cycling incorrectly, sending the images to the screen in chaos. I am working frantically to solve the problem. Suddenly, someone is screaming into my face: "That's it! I've had it! You get this thing running! Just GET it running! I give you fiiiiive minutes! If you don't know what you're doing, I'll find someone else who does!"
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"Screaming at me is not helping me solve this problem."
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The person blistering my eardrums is an attractive young woman in a little
grey suit — the curator. And for the duration of this project, my boss. I am mortified.
"Lynn," I say, "Screaming at me is not helping me solve this problem."
"Oh yeah?" she shouts, "But it's making me feel better!" And with that, she
stomps away.
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I look around. Her colleagues are busying themselves, acting as if nothing has happened. Later, one of them would say to me, in a spirit more of superiority than consolation, "Curators are prima donnas. You just have to know how to get along with them."
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Rudeness, bullying, intimidation — go ahead, call it abuse — goes on in a workplace because it is allowed. In my story, the curator, by being a
curator, gets to vent her anxiety however she wishes. Her co-workers, by not
protesting, support her in this. The first step in stopping abuse, wherever
it is happening, is to see it for what it is: to call it by name.
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Intro
The Screamer
No-boundary
Perfectionist
Machiavellian
Abusive
Resources
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