Usually I made time for it, because being a part of this workplace demanded small talk and commiseration. But not today. Today I broke the rules and sat silent as a mouse, holding my breath, waiting for the desperate people to shuffle along. Maybe that was wrong of me, but I just wasn’t up to their doom and gloom today.
The ones in high heels moved on right away, but the most pitiable ones—the ones in sneakers, loafers, or sandals with socks—stood there for a while. I could hear their breathing through the door as they lingered, listening to make sure there really was testing in progress, until they eventually sighed heavily and moved on toward the break room or the copy room.
Despite these measures, I only finished about half of what I had planned to get done, and when I left I had to stuff my organic cotton bag full of folders and books so I could do some more work later at home.
It wasn’t until I walked past the open door to the meeting room and noticed Peter Walsh in there carrying teacups that I recalled the reminder that had been blinking in my calendar for a good week.
“Ah, we seem to be the first ones here,” he said to me.
“Huh?”
“Everyone else is late. Late! I don’t know why we don’t just set all the meetings to start at a quarter past. We’re brainwashed into thinking only in academic quarter-hour blocks of time. Why don’t we just accept that?”
“Oh, right . . . ,” I said. “The meeting. Actually I have to, uh . . .”
“There you are!” said a voice. “In you go.” The chair of the department gave me a gentle nudge from behind so I stumbled into the windowless meeting room, where one by one the rest of the department quickly materialized. I knew I had to speak up now, right away, and say something. I could not be a party to this. I opened my mouth, but then closed it again.
I hated meetings. I hated the pointless discussions, the trite, predictable sense of humor, the endless digressions that dragged on ad nauseam, and the crazy compulsion to bring up and discuss every last little thing and squeeze it in under “other matters of business.”
That’s why we hardly had a single meeting when I was the faculty coordinator for the department. I received almost daily e-mails back then questioning why we never had any meetings, along with suggestions about topics we could meet about, but I just hit “Delete” and pretended I hadn’t ever seen them. They should have been as happy as clams to get out of all those meetings. They should have thanked me for making the tough decisions on my own and letting them spend their workdays working: writing, publishing, providing guidance, and teaching, all the stuff we were actually being paid to do.
The result was that I was stripped of the title.
“I think it would be best if we let someone else take over as faculty coordinator for a while,” the chair had said contemplatively. “There have been complaints, you see, reports that people’s sense of community in the department is taking a hit. People miss having a forum for dialogue.”
That’s because people use these meetings as an excuse for not working, I thought. And I wouldn’t have it.
I hadn’t attended a single meeting in the department since being asked to step down as coordinator. Until now.
I stared lugubriously across the table, where Ingvill was taking her seat. Her hair was gathered into two scrawny braids that hung limply from either side of her head. They dangled when she leaned forward, like little mouse tails. She set down her phthalate-free thermal travel mug, which she had bought at a conference in Germany and which could almost be considered a bodily appendage.
During my stint as faculty coordinator, she had implied several times that I ran things with authoritarian tendencies. The chair had mentioned that as well.
“I’m not saying that you do,” she had said, “but if people perceive it that way, we have a problem.”
“Ingvill thinks everyone has authoritarian tendencies,” I’d said. “That’s what her life is based on. She’s a perpetual victim.”
“Who said we were talking about Ingvill?” the chair had responded.
I watched Ingvill now, slurping coffee out of her eco-friendly mug, pulling out a gray pencil eraser and a sorry notepad she had procured from the supply closet.
“I see that we’re all here,” said the chair. “So, to get right down to business: As some of you already know, we’ve been instructed to revise all our course offerings. Whether we are for or against this, the fact is that the College of Arts and Letters passed a resolution and now we need to follow up. Thus, there’s no point in discussing the merits of the revision. The only matter of business at this juncture is a practical consideration of how to organize our programs and which classes to cut. And this needs to be done quickly, preferably by the end of the semester.”
A sigh ran through the room, creating a vacuum that made my scalp tingle. I only had five minutes and they were running out.
Ingvill had managed to take a half page of notes in her notepad already. She was probably psychoanalyzing herself. In Ingvill’s universe there was only one person. The rest of us were props.
Peter raised his hand.
“May I remind you,” he said, “that the last course revision was only two years ago.”
“Yes, in a sense that’s correct,” the chair said.
“So . . .”
“So now we’re implementing a new one.”
Peter sniffed disapprovingly.
“What do we need to do?” Ingvill asked nervously.
“First of all, we need to increase the number of credits for our courses so that we’re better aligned with the rest of the Norwegian university system.”
“May I remind everyone,” Peter said again, “that two years ago we reduced the credit weighting for all the courses for that very reason?”