My department almost got disbanded because we are a shitty, bad department of irredeemably clueless people. The Physics department got disbanded because they are worse. Of course, there’s austerity and there are our neoliberal administrators, that’s all true. But I can’t pretend that we don’t bear a large share of responsibility for this.
Yesterday, my colleagues engaged in a campaign of harassment against the new secretary, Julie, over textbook orders. Julie is a dream of a secretary. She is competent, efficient, experienced, and cheerful. There is a shortage of secretaries, and if she asks to be reassigned, other departments will snap her up in a flash. Julie told me that she’d worked for 4 other departments and there was nothing resembling this level of entitlement there. She didn’t put it that way because she’s not rude but the implication is clear. And I know she’s right. People were behaving like absolute shits towards her. For no reason and no gain. I spent the whole day reaching out to them individually and begging them to stop but to no avail.
Folks, this wasn’t one or two people who behaved this way. It was almost everybody.
“Why the hell are you asking me to assign a textbook for this course when I’m not teaching it?” ranted one colleague at Julie.
I got involved and very politely responded to him that, yes, he is, indeed, teaching this course. He insisted on teaching it. Which is why it’s in the schedule. That was published two months ago. And which he could have consulted before going off on Julie.
Do you think he apologized? Nope. “Ah, I forgot,” was his only response.
And on and on it went with people practically competing for the title of the most obnoxious pest in existence. Sending sheets and sheets of completely unreasonable demands that they know Julie isn’t authorized to meet.
This isn’t new. They were like this with the previous secretary, and I begged them for years to understand that we’ll be left without a secretary because nobody is obligated to put up with such attitude. I ended up prohibiting them from contacting the secretary at all and mandated that they send all communications for her to me instead. But my term as Chair is almost over and I can’t prohibit anything at this point, so they tore into Julie.
This doesn’t happen at other departments. I stopped sharing my stories with other Chairs because they don’t believe me when I tell them. They don’t have these problems with their faculty and think I’m inventing this. I can see it in the looks of polite withdrawal they give me, and I don’t blame them. To give a single example among a trillion, I allowed one colleague to work remotely because of her personal circumstances. I went against university regulations to do it. The Associate Dean turns a blind eye to this situation out of goodwill towards me personally. This goodwill is something I worked like a plantation slave to generate and never use to get special consideration for myself. I only use it to benefit others, like the remote working colleague.
But guess what? This remote colleague is throwing regular fits about not knowing what we discuss at faculty meetings. Which she chooses not to attend against every regulation. She lives 30 minutes away. She could attend them. She chooses not to, and I protect her from the consequences because she’s a mother and I just can’t avoid trying to be nice. I send her all of the documents I share at the meetings. She refuses to read them and then freaks out at me because she doesn’t know what’s in the documents. This person teaches severely underenrolled courses that are costing the university money, so it’s not like this is a hugely valuable specialist who can afford to be a nuisance.
A year doesn’t pass without somebody at the department threatening lawsuits against the university over something utterly ridiculous that they themselves caused. Is it that shocking that the administration wants to get rid of us?
The reason I’m sharing all this, besides needing to rant and lighten my emotional burden, is that there’s always agency. Austerity is real but we ran towards it like a professional track team and made it unavoidable that austerity will come for us first. If bad things are happening to you, is there any chance you could have caused some of them? That’s always an important question to ask. I clearly caused the situation with the entitled remote worker. It’s on me and my need to feel good about respecting her motherhood.
Clarissa's Blog 
I feel this. A couple of years ago, I took on an hefty service role (not department chair, but one more in charge of scheduling logistics and assignment of instructional support) and it’s been eye-opening. One of the major reasons why a tenured faculty member has to do this is the fact that faculty absolutely bully the staff. Part of my role is to shield the staff from the crazy that would befall them if my faculty colleagues were allowed to make demands unchecked. I am a full professor and I absolutely push back when people make unreasonable demands, plus I’ve streamlined some procedures so no one can say it’s not transparent who teaches what, where, and when, or that they haven’t been asked repeatedly for input. My predecessor was a bit meek, and I’m still dealing with the fallout of faculty going around him, putting pressure on the staff, the staff yielding when they shouldn’t have because who the hell wants to antagonize unrelenting douchebags? It turns out, I can be enough of an unrelenting douchebag in response (“secondary douchebagginess”™) that the worst offenders have calmed down. I won’t be doing this forever, but as long as I am, at least my staff (who are all wonderful) will be able to work in peace. What I’m saying is I hear you on dealing with entitled idiots. I don’t know how my chair does it, honestly. I’d be jailed for murder if I had to field all the crap my chair does.
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Before I became Chair, I honestly didn’t know how much bullcrap support staff has to eat from faculty. The same faculty who can’t shut up about social justice, yet they bully a very poorly paid support worker like the most entitled douchebro CEO in existence wouldn’t dream of doing.
My sabbatical can’t come soon enough. I need to distance myself and decompress because, as you say, I might start losing control.
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