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Letter 3: The Curious Case of Many Bosses

13 October 2014

Dear K.,

It was a pleasant surprise every time I received your letter. You must stop apologizing for intruding upon the serenity of my retirement. With a full working life ahead of you, you have no idea you could not possibly intrude upon anyone's retirement. And, forgive my cynicism (which has nothing to do with retirement), retirement does not equate to serenity.

Would I find it troublesome or tedious to write back? Hemingway once said to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 'Letter-writing is such a swell way to keep from working and yet feels you've done something.' I am in bliss when engaged in this converse of the pens.

You wrote half-jokingly that you sometimes found yourself serving more than one boss. I'd like to take it up half-seriously. I cannot say I have not heard such a comment before. Neither can I deny that at some points in my serving years I had not harboured similar feelings.

But I was once sagely advised by a senior academic-cum-administrator that the university is neither a company nor an organization but a community. In a community, roles are seldom defined or demarcated purely along lines of command and responsibilities. Loyalties are not only divided but, in a good sense, multiplied to achieve communal ends. Also, in a community, people don't just work there. They live there.

You must know what solid lines and what dotted lines mean within a management structure. In a university setting, the dotted lines are perhaps more interesting than the solid ones. It is important to connect the dots, or better still, see the dots where there aren't any.

The essence of a working relationship can be captured by any one of three prepositions: On the lowest rung, you work under someone ('the boss'); one step up, you work for someone ('the supervisor'); on the summit, you work with someone ('the colleague' or, at the risk of sounding utopian, 'the comrade'). Regardless of your respective ranks, you (plural) can choose which preposition to use, with results that may not be too subtle to give you cause for reflection.

It has not escaped people's notice that many types of job have disappeared in the last decade or so. What many did not realize is that employers are disappearing, too. In his new book The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad For So Many and What Can Be Done to Improve It (2014), David Weil analyzes the vanishing of regular payroll employment. Weil estimates that one third of the workforce is now employed through intermediaries (independent contractors, franchisees, third-party management, etc.) with more and more exacting demands but tougher and tougher terms in wages, job security and benefits.

When I learned that the University is promoting a positive workplace for all and has put in place some stringent guidelines for outsourcing, I could not suppress a cheer. You do not only have an employer but an old-school employer who cares. In the calculating world of maximized profit and value-for-money, what company or organization would go to some length to give recognition to their employees of 20, 25 or even 35 years?

In my days, an ex post facto letter of appreciation was often sent to the helper, and carbon-copied to his/her supervising officer. As new generations of administrators may do things differently and electronic means of communication are inevitably preferred, this may have become a rarity. But when you are in a position where you have been helped out by someone dottedly connected to you or not at all, think what this generous and genial gesture can mean. At the very least, it would give the recipient as much satisfaction as yours that arrive at my doorstep.

Sincerely yours,

H.

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