Mr. Un-nebulous Strikes Again!

My Beef This Week

So one of my good friends, we’ll call her Mary, interviewed with Mr. Un-nebulous (see below) and his super-sensitive team. I cautioned her against it because I thought he was a tool, but she said she got along with him OK and would just be careful of her comments. It turns out that that he seems to hire like-minded people, which is a good thing I got denied early because people would have run from the building crying had I interviewed in person.

Her interview didn’t turn out so well. She was worried about the team initially because she was told by Mr. Un-nebulous that he was having some problems with a team member being too sarcastic and another team member being sensitive to her personal comments. He was siding with Ms. Sensitive. Mary met Ms. Sarcastic and found her delightful – sarcastic funny, not sarcastic nasty. Then she met Ms. Sensitive who turned out to have a stick up her ass.

Ms. Sensitive asked Mary if she had issues working with nurses – it turns out the whole team was comprised of nurses. Mary thought this an odd question since we work with all types of medical professionals. Mary answered that our team is made up of people from various education levels: MDs, PhDs, PharmDs, and an RN and that the team worked quite well because of this. She went on to express that the RN was one of the best people on the team. She left thinking she had survived Ms. Sensitive unscathed.

Mary sent her thank you emails and even got a response from Ms. Sensitive wishing her luck and commenting on her great interview. Then she got the phone call…

Recruiter: “In the future you should refrain from making derogatory comments about nurses, especially when you are talking to nurses.”

Mary: “Excuse me?”

Recruiter: “You made a debasing comment about nurses to a nurse on the team.”

Mary: “I did not. Whatever I said was completely misconstrued.”

This went on for a while and the recruiter didn’t believe her, but he did divulge that it was Ms. Sensitive who said she made the comment. So Mary knew it was most likely a complete lie, because what she said could hardly be misconstrued as debasing to nurses. And the good luck email seemed evidence of her 2-faced nature. Mary probably made some witty comment that was somewhat sarcastic that pushed that stick further up Ms. Sensitive’s ass. Maybe Mary, being young, cute, higher degreed, and very intelligent threatened Ms. Sensitive. Either way, Ms. Sensitive had to find a way to keep Mary off the team. So she lied.

Now Mary is distraught because she’s worried about her professional reputation. She doesn’t want to get a reputation for being arrogant and nasty, when she is anything but. It is a small community. Anyone who knows her will know it is all fabrication, but that is little solace to her right now because she feels like shit. She can’t understand why someone who doesn’t know her would defame her for no apparent reason. She is hurt that the people, who actually DID meet her on the interview, could believe she would make such a statement.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of shitty people in this world. And you have to wade through a lot of assholes to get to the really great people. Maybe I’m just cynical, maybe I’m just in a bad mood, but I feel like I’m finding fewer and fewer redeeming characteristics in the people I meet. Maybe I’m just a young curmudgeon and need to re-evaluate things. I don’t know.

I cherish the friends that I have because they are truly wonderful human beings, and truly wonderful human beings, for me, are hard to find. Integrity, principles, and compassion often seem in short supply these days. I find principles without compassion, and ‘integrity’ dwelling in the same house as hypocrisy.

So now as my friend is hurting, I’m marinating in my own cynicism. Maybe it will pass before next week’s rant. Or maybe I’ll just meet another asshole.