I’m very envious of Klara’s dentist. He’s a young doctor who bought the practice a few years ago. Everybody is so kind, welcoming and exceptionally sweet to children at his practice that Klara keeps asking me to take her there when there’s no need. Every visit is like a theatrical performance aimed at a single, extremely important viewer.
Even the receptionists act with more tenderness than I’ve experienced from my own mother throughout my life.
What I envy is that this young guy managed to train his entire staff to behave like they are performing as Fairy Godmother in the most important spectacle of their lives. I have no idea how one gets workers to try so damn hard.
Clarissa's Blog 
Why not ask?
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I’m shy.
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”I have no idea how one gets workers to try so damn hard.”
It starts with good salary, benefits and a pleasant working environment.
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Yeah, uh-huh. Tell me more about that when I have people with $120,000 salaries, phenomenal benefits and completely uninterested in doing anything whatsoever than appearing for a couple of days a week to teach the same stuff they taught 20 years ago.
You can’t buy enthusiasm with money.
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I said it starts with good salaries, but doesn’t end there. The difference is that the dentist hires his own team and I’m pretty sure they don’t get tenure. If things are not working out, they may need to find a new job. You are dealing with people you cannot quite fire. Why should they change what they have been doing thus far if the minimum amount of effort worked for them for 20+ years? They are comfortable with the way things are.
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Why do I put the maximum effort into anything without any fear of getting fired? Why do I teach the same course in a completely different way for 15 years?
And no, it isn’t working for these people. They are all depressed. All on meds. All whining ceaselessly that life has no meaning. They all perked up with COVID thinking that now they’ll finally get the change they needed but it all turned out even worse. We’ve had a wave of early retirements in the past 4 years where the reason is “this is all meaningless, I need to do something else.”
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Let’s, however, not devalue my absolute incompetence in hiring. I’m so bad, it’s really funny. I’ve hired for all sorts of positions, and it’s a flop every time. We are all lucky I don’t run a business.
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”Why do I put the maximum effort into anything without any fear of getting fired?”
I didn’t mean it that way. When you run a business, if things are not working out, you do not have to continue employing that person. You hire someone else who is better suited for that position.
Academic positions are weird. Often, there is a lot of personal cost sunk into obtaining that position that may not be the best match for the person. But out of pride, some people cannot let go even if it is a terrible match for them. I had colleagues who were teaching the same class every semester for 20 years. I would go out of my mind doing that. Why they do it? Because they hate teaching and don’t want to spend any time on it. It is a bother to them. Why are they still university professors I don’t understand. There is nothing you can do to motivate people like that. The worst part is that often the young faculty you hire learn from those attitudes and perpetuate that disdain for teaching. I wish I knew what is a solution to this, but the problem you see is not unique to your department.
I think that, ultimately, there is less ego tied up in being a pediatric dental hygienist or a receptionist. If it’s not a good match, people leave those positions more easily and find something else to do.
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