The Bully (Latest Draft)

He was a bully and also my boss. I would pace outside his tightly shut office door hoping to hear something relevant or observe the elite allowed to participate in discussions of great consequence. Once I caught a glimpse of rolls of floor plans, wonderfully cream colored, inscribed with fine blue ink. Messy piles of papers and poster-size abstract sketches on easels were also in my field of vision. How I wanted to be included and make that maze of documents even messier!

My supervisor was a short and slightly built tyrant. As the Dean of Academics, he held the superior position to my Department Chair of Library Services. His black hair, thick mustache and clipped New Delhi accent indicated a cultural background that differed widely from mine. Tehruen Singh (pronounced tuh-roon singed) rigidly believed that women were the lesser sex and forbidden to second-guess men. Therefore, it should not be surprising that, behind his back, the female faculty at the college called him “’to ruin’ your day.”

Having immigrated to America, solo at the age of fourteen, my great-grandmother became the matriarch of a clan of authentically liberated women. Following in the footsteps of my grandmother, who knew everything there was to know about operating a restaurant during the Depression, and the footsteps of my mother, who knew everything there was to know about educating handicapped children, I knew everything there was to know about librarianship. My goodness, I was a published professional with twenty years experience including selecting the menus for a four-day conference of the American Library Association.

Tehruen regarded the college library as unavoidable evil whose all-female staff did nothing to raise its stature. We proved our weak and limited characters by offering peppermints at the checkout desk and just-comfy-enough couches for brief afternoon naps. Proofreading for students and some minor ghost writing for professors was just part of our repertoire. Codling our clients brought the library recognition as the “best” department on campus but only mockery from my boss. We eventually heard, second-hand, that Tehruen had bragged, "My library ladies used every cent I gave them and now the library has the best culinary collection in the Southeast."

Tehruen’s background was hotel management and, like many administrators within the university, his education degrees were honorary. I championed ivory tower teaching philosophies, dedicating myself to causes like the “Right to Read” and the banishment of censorship. The Dean of Academics extolled financial conservation and lived for the bottom line. Tehruen calculated that it was sometimes cheaper to photocopy library books instead of purchasing additional copies and would ruin my day by demanding that I force feed the Xerox machine.

The man who wrote my recommendations and decided my salary favored leadership through coercion. Bi-weekly Dean’s Councils, attended by all department heads, were lengthy and loud. Tehruen jump-started each meeting declaring it would be brief since his goal was to “poke holes in all of your ideas.” Perched around the intimidating boardroom table, snacking on delicacies cooked by our culinary students, our stomachs knotted and I always achieved world-class tension headaches. Co-workers were occasionally awed by my outspokenness, but then, they had never met my mother or grandmother. Besides, as a woman who knew everything there was to know about librarianship, it was my duty to improve on Tehruen’s dictums.

Our battle of wills peaked when plans for the construction of a library for the new campus were in the works. My valuable suggestions for pleasant color schemes and attractive seating arrangements were unjustly disregarded. This was the arena of whip-cracking male architects and cost accountants. Information about the “big move” never appeared on Dean’s Council agendas. Tehruen, with his door tightly sealed, knew I was just as hungry for information as I was for the roast duck being prepared in the adjacent classroom.

After I yipped for attention endlessly, my master did throw me a bone. If I could produce a business plan in three days, he would reveal some secrets about the new campus. Knowing that I had no formal business training, Tehruen was tossing me a challenge rather than an opportunity. At the Midwestern College I attended in the late 60’s, women wore high-heals, but not slacks, to music, education, and literature (but never economics) classes. I was a librarianship theorist, not a practitioner.

My boss was soon to be astounded by the resourcefulness of his “library ladies.” We did have an array of reference materials and research databases at our fingertips. We could also apply uniquely feminine experiences to the project. Luckily for my social life and future business tasks, I had been a founding member and interim president of a new college sorority. Tehruen would certainly not approve of my acquiring planning and organizational skills a la Phi Sigma Psi but, then, he never presided over twenty-six sisters writing a rhyming motto or choosing, in the tradition of Solomon, dark blue and baby blue for sorority colors over purple and white.

With the zeal that would make my female forbearers proud, I lived a three-day cram course in business planning. Of course, I came to understand that the everything I knew about librarianship did not include essentials like load bearing floors and security systems. I was humbled to have taken for granted the financial foundation that supports library services.

Unexpectedly, there turned out to be a method to the Dean of Academics’ madness. When throwing down the gauntlet of the business plan, he advised me to begin with my philosophical goals and objectives, construct the program of services on those, figure what personnel, materials and space were needed to provide those services, and conclude with the dollars and cents to make it happen. Tehruen gave me the inspiration to create a remarkable theoretical and practical document. Mine was an otherworldly learning experience compared to that of a typical librarian.

True to his word, the business plan was my admittance ticket to Tehruen’s office full of paper piles, spreadsheets, and diagrams. Unrolling the cream-colored floor plans was as delicious as I had imagined. Predictably, my boss poked holes in most of my ideas but he acknowledged the need for attractive library seating. I didn’t even try to interest him in dark blue and baby blue paint treatments. How satisfying it was to be a member of the group in the center arena discussing the future of the college.

Tehruen and I have gone in different directions. He has been promoted to Vice-President of the relocated campus and is continuing to ruin the days for faculty members there. I chose not to move and am carrying other crosses in public education. Mutual acquaintances have told me that stories prevail about my Joanne of Arc escapades and that striking aspects of the new library have my touch. It seems that my boss, although still a bully, has come to regard me with some admiration. I miss him; I miss his challenges; and I miss being his “library lady.”