by mscheckmate » Sat Oct 26, 2002 11:46 am
After graduate school, I worked as an administrative assistant to a professor who shall remain forever nameless. She was a brilliant scholar and an outstanding teacher. But she was beyond quirky. She thought that the phones were tapped, and that she was being followed by whatever government agency she'd run afoul of. In a typical work-week, I might not see nor hear from her for days, then she'd appear suddenly with a massive project that had to be done that minute. But, after a few days, she'd lose interest in that particular project, the project would be shelved, and she'd disappear again.
And she wouldn't let me throw anything out. Perhaps it came from having been a child during the Depression. She thought that any junk that was lying around the lab could eventually be used or sold. Even used computer paper, or moldy old coffee mugs. So, I used to get rid of things on the sly while she was away. She never noticed.
My first job was great, though. I worked in a public library. For some reason, the county didn't care all that much about nepotism. So, my mother was my immediate supervisor. She was very easy to work for: competent and fair, and very good at getting some rather wacky people to somehow work well together. But the best thing about that job was the strong gay and lesbian presence at work. Several of the librarians were family, and I got to see happy, successful, functioning gay people, instead of the stereotype I'd been fed growing up that "there's nothing 'gay' about being gay."
