The other day at work, I was following up with a friend and colleague about a long term project we’ve been working on. It’s one of those grinding, every day, horrible, drudgery-filled things where it’s important but low visibility. Multiple teams have to collaborate. None of them want to. I have no authority over any of the teams involved, but one of my jobs is wrangling them, and making sure that problems get dealt with completely. It involves a lot of what would be called “coordination” if I was of the male gender. Because I am of the female gender it is often referred to as “being a bitch.” Whatever. If they would do their fucking jobs without continual prompting, they wouldn’t need coordination OR bitching.
It is a part of my job that I dislike intensely, but I am good at it.
We were discussing how much progress we’ve made over the last several weeks, and when I told him how glad I would be to get out of bitch mode for a while, he said:
“It takes a lot of irritation and friction to get a pearl.”
I poked him in the eye because, because nobody wants to be referred to as irritation and friction even in a metaphor. Not even the kind of irritation that results in a valuable pearl being created. OK. I didn’t poke him in the eye. I told him to stop being so fucking wise, and he called me Minnie Pearl. I could tell there was no winning, so I went back to my desk.
That’s what my job is like.