Merry . . . ah, screw it

The last time I visited the notion of my workplace, two subjects were at hand:

1. My work environment. As I wrote:

My office was, until recently, a classroom. Now, thanks to the imposition of several portable dividers, none of them reaching to the ceiling, the converted space holds the dean, myself and another chair, the office manager to the dean, the office manager the other chair and I share, my associate chair, and the other chair's intern, and two receptionist/assistants. My desk sits in the center of the room, surrounded on three sides by dividers that lean sideways and, when upright, come up to my chest.

This is, of course, an absurd working environment for a college of 10,000 students. I was never one to hold out for the corner office, but as a chair I listen all day to complaints from students and sensitive matters with faculty, and when I really need not to be overheard (for, say, accusations of harassment) my only recourse is to take either my visitor or my cellphone out to the parking lot. Otherwise, all nine of us can hold a conversation in our normal speaking voices without getting up from our seats.

2. Administrative assistants' day. As I wrote:

Sill, as this day approaches, I have a bit of foreboding. Who gets invited, and who does the inviting? Our solution is that the Dean, the other chair and I spring for the rest of the gang: the associate chair, the intern, receptionists, and so forth. Of course, we leave out the campus receptionists, the work study students, and the adjunct faculty, on the grounds that you have to draw the line somewhere.

The second issue has to do with where we go. My office manager is an intensely private woman in her sixties. As she has turned down all lunch invitations extended by anyone over the past decade-plus--all but two per year, her birthday and today--I suspect that she views this as even more of an obligation that I do. But to point that out out loud--ick.

So we have lunch. But I eschew flowers. An Easterner by birth, in the great Eastern tradition, I give money. Money for everyone. At least that part is easy and (I hope) appreciated.

The two subjects converged quite messily in the months of April and May, and left me elated on the one hand and ashamed on the other.

Let me explain.

In May I moved to a new office, the fourth of the last 13 months and the best one at all. The I had gone:

*from a tiny cubbyhole with a west-facing picture window that, in the bright East Texas afternoons would beam Monetesque rectangles of sunlight on my text, beams so intense they literally burned spots in my computer screen and gave me daily headaches . . .

*to a windowless office opposite my first, something large enough for only one person, and with a computer its previous owner had left with a succession of irremovable porno pop-ups that would explode like Fantasia in the middle of an e-mail I was trying to type . . . .

*to the above-said desk-in-middle-of-the-classroom . . .

*to my present confines.

When, in April, I learned we were moving again, I knew our daily ritual would be rather simple:

9 am-noon: Shove crap into boxes.

Noon-1 pm: Lunch.

1 pm-5 pm: Shove crap into boxes.

The problem (if it could be called that) was that, having moved twice within a year, I had--like the boy in Faulkner's "The Bear"--stripped myself of all non-essentials. And--what do they call it now?, Administrative Assistants' Day?--seemed to fall under everyone's radar.

So nobody got anything. Our Dean (part of the move) was slowed to a state of trying to run the tricky wickets of finalizing the move; another colleague, a department chair like me, was going through a divorce that Mel Gibson should have filmed.

So? So nothing happened after . . . after whatever you what to call Secretaries' Day came and went. Weeks came and went, offices were changed . . . and nothing happened. None of us took anyone to lunch; none of us gave anyone any money. Weeks went by, nothing. Then, more nothing. No one seemed especially upset, but as the weeks went on, I felt worse. Finally, a fulcrum was crossed, a point where any mention of Secretaries' Day was an admission of defeat. To say, "We missed it!" was the worst eating-of-s*** one could imagine. So I clammed up.

I've written this before, and said it countless times. The office manager for humanities--the closest I will ever have to a secretary--is efficient, hard-working, and brilliant. I would--to borrow a clause from Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day--be lost without her. It was hellish to watch Secretaries' Day come and go, and do nothing, but that is what happened. So I gave her twice what she deserved this Christmas. I thought of saying, "Sorry about Secretaries' Day!" but I didn't. But she deserved whatever I gave, and twice again.

Merry Christmas.