Axxhole? No smartxxx

We have this professor who can be very sweet when he chooses to be, and the opposite when he does not want to be. He can switch these roles when he wants, like one switches a light on and off. A very remarkable ability, I must say. “I have come to request you to send my fourth year resident back to my unit” he said sweetly. “All the four lecturers you have given me are new. There is no one who knows my unit’s working. The unit’s work is greatly disturbed.” We had received seventeen new lecturers, when at one time they had shown inability to give us more than one. We had held a meeting just to decide their placement, and had placed them in all units maintaining an even distribution of qualified doctors, after reaching a consensus on the issue. That was eight days ago. He had met me four days ago asking for a change, and I had explained everything to him, asking him not to disturb the placements. He had had four more days to rethink on that issue, and now here he was, wanting to change that placement. “But the unit has you, and your associate professor, who are old hands” I said. “And one of your lecturers has been with you for almost a month. She has worked in this department for six months prior to that appointment.” “But she is new in my unit. I want someone who knows our protocols.” “If I shift someone, there will be shortage in that unit. We must not favor some people and trouble others” I said. “We can take out a lecturer from the last unit headed by a mere associate professor” he said. “She need not have as many working staff members. Surely I deserve to have more as a professor.” “I am sorry” I said “but it has nothing to do with the seniority of unit heads. Patients go equally to units held by a professors and an associate professor. I want all units to have adequate number of people to treat the patients.” “But units junior to mine have more qualified doctors” he said and named a few names. “They are DGO diploma holders, who are not considered to be quat par with degree holders” our expert on medical council rules said. “They are registrars, both by appointment and by placement in their units.” “I agree” I said. “DGO is a qualification, for your information” he said. “They are considered as nonqualified residents and are not allowed to make decisions, both by MCI and by us as decided together” I said. “If you feel you cannot give me my fourth year resident back, don’t give” he said. “But tell me,” I said, “do you really think your unit has collapsed because you don’t have a fourth year resident, when you have one professor, one associate professor, four lecturers, two registrars and five junior residents?” “I never said it has collapsed. Its function is disturbed” he said. “Give one lecturer from the last unit to the unit which has this resident and give him back to me.” I had had enough with this democracy business. I was too democratic. Even in model democracy, persons elected were allowed to hold office for five years. In our departmental democracy started and nurtured by me, the senior members wanted to change their own intelligently made decisions in less than ten days. “We made that decision jointly last week. I had taken everyone’s opinion, including yours. You had agreed to do what we did. Now that is final. There will be no change, because there is no valid reason to change anything.” The meeting ended there. The next day a few staff members got together and got around to discussing the previous day’s non-issue. “I cannot understand how such a senior professor cannot understand simple things, and how he cannot honor past and present decisions” one person said. “No. It is not that he does not understand. He understands everything very well. Today he fired the registrar of the last unit for some trivial thing, and asked her why she could not manage things when there were so many qualified doctors in that unit. It is not an issue of getting his fourth year resident back. He is getting back at the head of that unit.“ “He is not an axxhole, he is a smartaxx” a knowledgeable staff member concluded. (Note: x is printed in place of another alphabet so as to maintain a certain standard of writing, even if the standard of the department is greatly lowered by such petty fights.)