(10:40 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

A Work Post

Instead of doing actual work, I'm going to write about my work. I am not generally in favor of heavily work-centered posts, but they are occasionally good, for instance, Robb's post about the young punks vandalizing his workplace. Instead of a story, this will be a series of observations. (For those who don't know, I am a book keeper/x-ray analyst for a chiropractor.)

• The owner, Dr. G, took a leave of absence for ten months this past year, leaving our office with only Dr. S (full time) and Dr. W (part time) to cover the workload for most of that time (another full-time associate, Dr. C, left to start his own office in August). Now that Dr. G is back, I realize how genuinely strange the arrangement is. While he was gone, everyone there was basically an employee; although Dr. S was obviously busier than us and definitely more essential to the business than us, he was still a fellow employee whom one could call to task for avoiding his duties. Dr. G, however, while still being in some sense an employee or worker (in that he actually works now, instead of merely collecting the profits of the business), is still on a higher level than us; if he decides not to do something, then someone else simply has to pick up the slack. If he makes a demand that seems unreasonable, we simply have to run with it and do the best we can. I honestly felt more comfortable with having all the doctors as fellow employees -- having the owner around at all times, ready and willing to ask for whatever arbitrarily occurs to him, is a lot more stressful.
  
  With the office manager and the other associate doctors, I have a nice, friendly relationship appropriate to working in close contact with people day in and day out -- but Dr. G is just on a higher level psychologically speaking, which makes it odd to work with him every day, as though he's in the office but not of it.
  
  
• For most practical purposes, I am a woman when I walk in the office every morning. The dirty work seems to be divided along gender lines, with the assumption that associate doctors will always be men and office workers will always be women. The result is that associate doctors are responsible for shovelling the sidewalk and taking out the driveway, while the office workers (not necessarily me) are responsible for changing lightbulbs, vacuuming, sweeping, etc. Though they've had male workers before me, the work remained divided in the same way -- although I do tend to get a lot more of the labor-intensive women's work, such as going across the street to the long-term storage area or up into the attic or changing lightbulbs or carrying heavy boxes from storage closet to storage closet. In addition, the doctors are never as patronizing toward me as they sometimes are towards the female office workers -- while the ladies might need occasional spoon-feeding or hand-holding in order to understand difficult things, I never get that kind of attitude. When I make a stupid mistake, it's considered a momentary lapse, whereas for almost everyone else, it's considered par for the course. I am not entirely sure this is related to the intelligence of individual employees, which does obviously vary -- it seems to be a sort of vestigial chauvanism. Still, when people leave the office, they're likely to address all office workers, including me, and say, "See you later, ladies." When someone points out the fact that I'm a guy, I'm not sure whether they're apologizing for placing me in the degrading category of "woman" or whether I am supposed to apologize to them for not living up to their expectations of gender roles.
  
  I'm not trying to make a big deal out of this. My masculinity is not threatened by being an office worker in a doctor's office. It isn't. I swear. I know I'm a real man. The ladies know I'm a real man.
  
  
• Today was the last day for T., an office worker who is pregnant. She is unusually talkative and frank, and so it has been fascinating for me to hear her talk about every detail of her pregnancy. (I know a lot of guys are squeamish about "feminine issues," but my upbringing prevented that in my case.) I didn't know before this that women could feel the baby moving around so much, or that you could see the baby pushing against the edge of the womb, see the indentation on the woman's stomach. I didn't know about the specific pains it caused or about how much of a crapshoot it is whether you're going to be throwing up constantly. I didn't know about not being able to sleep or about the back pain. My aunt went through two pregnancies during my youth, but at that time I had other things to pay attention to -- video games and stuff -- although I did end up becoming intimately acquainted with changing diapers and holding babies and all that, through extensive babysitting. It's been nice to catch up on knowledge of pregnancy, even if her occasional "too much information" was embarrassing for some of the other people in the office.
  
  There was one point, though, when I backed away -- T. asked if I wanted to feel the baby move, and I found the prospect mildly terrifying. It might not have been the physical intimacy of it, but just the idea of an infant and all the responsibilities it carries with it. That may well have represented a betrayal to her, unconsciously perhaps. When I first worked there, I sat next to her for eight hours a day, almost every day, and we developed a certain level of casual comfort with physical closeness -- nothing sexual, nothing particularly intimate, but just the necessary level of comfort for people who have to reach across each other all day long. I didn't get a hug after work when she left tonight. Again, this is not a big symbolic thing, just something interesting. A similar, strange physical bond developed between me and Richard's now wife when they were first dating -- I used to joke around and "hit on her," and it just felt natural, not a big deal, not sexual (even that one time when I was drunk... Richard is a better man than I). At some point, that just went away, and that was fine and understandable. I've had similar bonds with other people -- in college, I might have even had a similar bond with Richard himself. During my high school years, such a bond developed between me and my youngest cousin, who always felt completely comfortable sitting on my lap -- he felt like the only member of my family for whom physical affection was a natural outgrowth of just liking me, rather than trying to "hold on," etc. I wonder, is there always a physical element in friendship? Do our sexualization of most physical contact, and also our rigid ideas of "sexual orientation," keep such things from being sustainable in the long term (i.e., sooner or later such contact must either fade away or become the grounds for an exclusive relationship)?
  
  I don't have anything like that right now, not even a cat.
  
  
• On a few occasions, I've thought about dating patients who come into the office -- sometimes women are flirtatious with me (understandable in an area with so few eligible young people of either gender), and sometimes they just seem to be really nice and really pretty and I want to ask them out. In reality, though, I can't imagine a situation in which that would be possible, just because of the nature of my work environment. I'm easily the youngest worker, and I'm also the only male office worker, which would cause everyone to take on this motherly/older-sisterly approach to the budding relationship, at least in the fantasies of what would happen when one of them saw me ask someone out. Growing up, I was always embarrassed for my mom, aunt, and grandma to find out which girls I liked or which celebrities I found attractive -- like it was always the wrong one. My approach to such matters only exacerbated the problem -- although in my mind, I was quite promiscuous and didn't necessarily have exacting standards of attractiveness, when I finally let slip the name of some person I found attractive, it was suddenly a Big Deal, like with those people who learn one fact about you and will never talk to you about anything else. Since I seemed to be so asexual or so uninclined to venture into dating (although below the surface I was a seething cauldron of lust), my letting it be known that I "liked" someone was an Event. Strategies were developed. Plans of attack were drawn up, then dismissed in favor of better plans. I should walk to her house. I should carry flowers. I should hold her hand. I should bring her over for dinner. Etc., etc., etc. It was all a little too much attention. I like attention as much as the next guy, but I like it on my terms, for accomplishments that I deem worthy of attention.

That turned out very differently from how I thought it would. (I apologize to Richard and Kari if any part of this post bothers you -- I'll take that part down if you want.)

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