I got a new guy in my department. More staff is a good thing; we have some accelerated projects coming up and I was wondering how to get them done while keeping to my strict "I don't work nights and weekends" rule. Now that I have a new guy, I can make him work night and weekends.
No, no, I'm just kidding.
The downside to this is that I didn't get to interview and hire for this position, it was more like, his last boss wanted to get rid of him. Thing is, so did his boss before that. Last thing my boss said to me when he delivered the good news was "If you have any problems...document them."
Faaaaan-tastic.
So I asked around to find out exactly why this guy's getting dumped, and all I'm hearing is "He's weird."
Well, we're a company full of scientists. Everybody is weird. I don't know if it's the chemicals or the left-brain dominance or what, but we have some serious normality deficits.
I knew New Guy only well enough to say hello in the hall, and he's always struck me as painfully shy. Today he maybe talked a little too much, and I suspect that may be the weirdness...the other unsocalized scientists can't deal with his particular brand of social ineptitude.
And, well, the other three people in my group all have their little quirks, too. And while I specifically asked to have one of them transferred to me, her boss was relieved to get rid of her because she didn't fit in in their freak show.
I can only imagine what people say about me, weirdness-wise.
When I was thinking about it later, it really depressed me. I remember being terrorized as a kid, shut out by cliques who decided for reasons unknown to hate me. I remember the kids who wouldn't let me sit next to them on the school bus when they had the only empty seats. God forgive me, I remember ignoring other kids because someone decided they were too "weird" to associate with.
My sister is reliving the horror with my niece. Every time my niece comes home from school with "I hate playing freeze tag. The boys laugh at me because I run too slow then they push me when they tag," my sister has the residual pain from being picked on herself, with the worse realization that her children are going to go through the same misery, and there is nothing she can do to protect them.
Everyone I talked to about this today had a story, too. Everyone had been teased, picked on, or shunned. Everyone was weird. If this is a universal childhood trauma, I'm a little surprised to see it happening again with adults at work.
The woman I hand-picked for the department, the one who didn't get along so well with her old group, is pretty much my right hand. I told her we were getting New Guy, and asked what she thought. "People were pretty mean to him in the lab," she said. "They think he's weird...I liked him okay. But then, most of my friends are weird. I'm weird." She shrugged.
Hell, I'm weird, too. Maybe it will work out fine on the Island of Misfit Toys.
Posted by Nic at March 16, 2004 05:59 PM | TrackBackI had a similar situation. My mother's solution was to have me stare down the boys and yell "GET" (I guess as in away?). I believe it worked for a whole week.
hln
Posted by: hln at March 18, 2004 05:02 PM