Page 47 of An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love
I set down my fork, my appetite vanished.
“Everything okay?” Gramps asks, reaching for his glass of iced tea.
“Just thinking about work stuff.” I hear how shaky my voice is, so I clear my throat and try to snap out of it.
He shakes his head. “Preoccupied about work. You know, if you wanted to, a girl your age could be a stay-at-home mother. Find a husband, have a baby, and tend to the house all day.”
I give him a look.
“Old-fashioned?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah.” I pull off a piece of chicken with my fingers. “People still do that, but like, I think it’s because of the cost of child care. Besides, why would you suggest that when your own wife had a career?”
He grins. “Just trying to help.”
“It would be more helpful to tell me how to deal with a boss who’s all up in my business,” I mumble.
“Hmm.” He gestures thoughtfully with his fork as he swallows a mouthful of bread. “This I have experience with.”
“Really?”
Gramps nods. “I had a supervisor once—this was when I was in my early thirties—who was fastidious about confirming the results of our experiments. Checking our lab notes, reading our reports, that was all normal. But this guy—Chester Crevasse—he was something else. More often than not, he would have us repeat our tests while he watched, so he could confirm the results with his own eyes.”
“That sounds really annoying. And time consuming.”
“It was. And it didn’t win him many friends, either. We called him Chester Stick-Up-His—you know what.” He laughs like this is a fond memory.
“So how did you deal?”
“Aside from talking about him behind his back? We just had to go along with it. Academia is full of inconveniences, from lack of funding, to bureaucratic red tape, to Crevasse-holes.” He pops another bite of chicken into his mouth. “Actually, though, we got him fired.”
“What?”
“It turned out he was stealing some of our experiments to use in his own research papers.”
“No way.”
“Yes way. In our field, the number of research papers you published was the most important number on your CV. Anyway, that explained why he wanted to watch us replicate our results.”
“Unbelievable.” This story has made me feel better about my own situation, and I find I’m hungry again.
He watches me eat for a moment, then asks, “What’s so terrible about your boss?”
“Well.” I pat my mouth with my napkin. “She’s always checking in on me, micromanaging my time, making sure I’m attending meetings. It doesn’t sound like much, I guess, but it’s kind of suffocating.”
“If you work remotely”—Gramps says the word slowly, like he’s trying it out—“what else is she supposed to do? What kind of manager would she be if she wasn’t checking in on her employees?”
“I guess, it’s just… she should treat us like adults, you know? Just trust that we’re doing our jobs.”
He gives a little shrug. “I don’t know. Sounds like the nature of work to me.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. This feels sort of lecture-y, which makes me feel like a petulant teenager. I carry my plate to the sink.
“What do you like about your job, anyway?”
“Um.” It’s a thoughtful question, so I try to give my answer some actual thought, too. I picture a typical workday: the easy routine of sitting at my computer; the structure of following my calendar from one meeting to the next; knowing that I’ll be prepared if I take enough notes. “It’s… comfortable, but challenging. I have to use my brain, and I’m kept busy all day, so the hours pass by quickly.”
“What do you use your brain doing?” Gramps leans back in his chair, hands behind his head.
