Whack a Bigot

Normally, Carolyn Hax is one of the most sensible of advice columnists. Her daily column in the Washington Post is well worth the time and effort.

Today, however, Hax whiffs on a fastball straight down the middle. I hope you appreciate the sports metaphor.

The problem involves a middle age woman whose new team leader is young and female. In fact, said team leader is the same age as the letter writer’s children. 

Here is the letter:

I’ve been at my job for 14 years. We started a new, huge project so there are some new hires and new structuring. We are divided into four groups of about 10, each with a team leader, and there is one person who leads the team leaders.

This person used to be my direct boss, and we had a great working relationship.

I’ve been on my team for about three weeks and I’m having a hard time with my team leader, who is just out of business school and is the same age as my kids. She doesn’t do anything specifically insulting or difficult, I just have a really hard time taking a 25-year-old seriously at work.

I went to my old boss and asked to be switched to a different team, and he told me no. He also said there is no reason not to listen to my team leader.

Before examining Hax’s error, we note that the woman has no reason to respect a twenty-five year old, inexperienced, newly minted MBA. We recall the remark of Yao Puzhong… who noted admiringly that one of the nation’s best managed companies, Costco, does not hire MBAs.

Has the MBA earned anyone’s respect? No, she has not. Does she bring any experience to her position? No, she does not. She was apparently hired straight out of business school. While the letter writer limits herself to a mention of the woman’s age, we suspect, because we are of a suspicious temperament, that there are other reasons, more concrete, more palpable for her inability respect her new team leader. The man who hired her has a vested interest in his own bad decision, so clearly he does not want to hear about the problem. And he does not want to show a lack of confidence in the neophyte he hired. By the way, to assess the situation we would want to be able to see the team leader, to evaluate her attitude, her posture, her tone of voice, her decisiveness and her physical presence.

At your leisure, consider this. If the letter writer were a male and he was asked to report to a young woman just out of business school, would he respect her? Or would he begin to question how she had gotten her job? The letter writer is far too civil to raise such questions.

Anyway, Carolyn reads the same letter that you have read-- without my commentary-- and decides that the letter writer is being ageist. Yes, indeed, children… the problem is bigotry.

Allow Hax her opinion:

According to what you wrote, at least, there is in fact no reason not to listen to your team leader. So quit indulging these hard feelings before they cost you your job.

Imagine how you’d feel if she asked to have you transferred out because she doesn’t like working with someone her mother’s age.

Ageism is ageism. Your complaint is ageist.

Since no one has any reason to respect a whiny post-adolescent MBA, Hax is merely guilt tripping the letter writer. Doesn’t that sound like one of our culture’s most important symptoms? If you are working for someone who has never manifested any competence, or who is incompetent, who does not inspire her staff’s confidence, then the fault, dear reader, is you and you mindless bigotry. Such is the way that those who have drunk the politically correct Kool Aid have been told that they must think. They must imagine that the team leader is a woman of superior competence, extraordinary executive abilities... who is only being held back by bigotry.

We do not know why the team leader was hired? We do not know whether or not she was hired to fill a diversity quota. We do know that she is failing in the first basic aspect of her job: to inspire confidence in her staff.