Petty bullshit

The amount of petty bullshit I have to deal with at work seems to be mounting. Over the years, I've grown used to a certain amount; it goes with the territory in the publishing world, I've found. Today I had to pretend to be deeply concerned by an e-mail from an asshole author (one of the biggest eye-openers for me when I started out in publishing was that a lot of authors are jerks, sort of a let down considering I had looked up to writers for most of my life). I had to pretend to be deeply concerned because my supervisor was pretending to be deeply concerned (I'm giving my supervisor the benefit of the doubt here, because if she was truly deeply concerned by the nonsense in this e-mail, then she's got more serious problems than I had suspected). As it turns out, the reason this author was so upset was because a few figure captions had been inconsistently capitalized. I'm not making this up. Apparently, a couple incorrectly capitalized words was all it took to fire up this idiot's indignation. But my supervisor, more eager than ever to catch me in error these days, saw an opportunity even though she still didn't fully comprehend how ridiculous the author's remarks were. She had to keep beating it into the ground. She wouldn't let it rest until I was completely cowed. Fuck that! I now realize that the turning point in my relationship with my supervisor was when she recognized that I wasn't going to take her bullshit (I've noticed over the years that she tends to hire very meek young women, types of women she figures she'll have no problem browbeating; one assistant remarked, "She talks to me like I'm an idiot"--this being the crux of the problem: she talks to everyone like they're idiots). Now we go at it fairly regularly. It's a nuisance, but I take consolation in the fact that I'm not the only one who has been put in this position. And as someone who likes a good argument, I'll be happy to oblige.