Off Duty Professional Etiquette.

[Rat Bag]

I have wondered about this for some time. Thus, I pose unto you the question?

Do you care, and is it any of your business, what your child's grade school teacher, for example, does on the weekend?

This is only one example but I guess it pertains to other professions. What would you think if you saw your child's grade school teacher (or your counsellor or doctor or preist for that matter) out at a club sleazing around, or at the local after one too many, or perhaps at an open mic comedy night, swearing and being rude, obnoxious and offensive? What would you think if you often saw your child's teacher out at the shops, for example, and every time you saw him or her, he or she had a new romantic partner under their arm? How would you feel about having to answer the related questions that your kid might ask? What if your child's teacher got locked up during a peaceful protest? Would you hold it against them? What if they were caught on camera at an anti-prohibition rally or something and you saw them on news footage?

I gather that we've our share of professional people here at S8 who have an image to uphold in the community. How do you feel about that? Have you ever had any worries in this regard?

And you other people who have opinions, I want to hear them. Do you hold professionals to an appropriate standard when they are off duty? What if you found out that your preist frequents strip clubs or that your doctor sniffs coke? If the priest gives good guidance and your doctor's ability to do his job is not affected by his drug habit, then is it really any of your business?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.

[knip]

i'm not worried about it, no...some things would worry me, but it's hard to operationalize...i can't say 'so long as it's legal', because i don't really care what drugs they take in their off hours...i'm not sure why i should care

some things would bother me, not because they're illegal, but because they're wrong, in my view....kiddy porners, break-and-enter, violence-prone...these are the types of things that would worry me...but not consensual sex, drugs, or boozing...no, that wouldn't bother me

[judih]

i am who i am - no matter what i'm doing.

film me at my worst - that's who i am.
(though i try to avoid lockup if possible)

[Doreen Peri]

I'd prefer the doctor didn't operate on me while high on coke or any other substance.

I'd prefer my child's teacher publish a blog anonymously announcing his or her personal adventures if they are at all questionable in society's judgemental eye. After all, if he or she is a great teacher, I wouldn't want society's negative judgement of his or her personal life to take him or her away from the school system.

As for me?

I am who I am.

Film at 11.

(though, I do admit, I try to keep my personal life separated from my work life, but my internet presence is very real and if anybody at work wanted to find my internet life, which is part of my personal life and also where i discuss my personal life, they can have at it.... nothing to hide.)

Interesting topic, Ratzo.... (I call you that endearingly because that was Dustin Hoffman's name in "Midnight Cowboy," one of my favorite films).

What are your opinions on the topic?

[Rat Bag]

Hey knip, thanks for the response.

Judih, you no doubt identify with this topic. I relate you to this topic as i understand you are a teacher of sorts too and I also understand that you listen to (and find great meaning in) the likes of McKenna (btw, since listening to his audio clips like you suggested it's all making much more sense).

You are an educator but you've no doubt got what "society's judgemental eye" might call some shady characteristics (no implication, just that it seems to me you are of at least an open-minded ilk, if not experimentally minded).

Dor, thanks for chiming in too, I was looking forward to your response because your view often represents what I'd consider fairly mainstream (though you are far from main stream, my dear).

What do I think? Well, I don't know, I'm pretty open minded and wouldn't like to judge anyone on what they do in their own time. I was just wondering because it strikes me...

Well, the truth is, in my experience, teachers are, for the most part, pretty out there. Well, that's not true, most of the people went through the course with me were pretty straight, but there is certainly a faction of crazy-out-there minded folk like myself. People who might listen to the likes of McKenna and/or read the likes of R.A. Wilson or perhaps simply experiment with their consciousness.

Was just wondering because often I hear the sentiment "uh oh, look out, you're going to be a teacher? that's it, lock up the kids" about the likes of me. As though people are scared that I'm not going to indoctrinate their kids like society would have me. Scared that their kids will grow up open minded and unconditioned. I don't know.

I don't know. I kind of ask also because I fear having to walk on eggshells. If a colleague asks me what I did on the weekend, for example, I could simply respond "oh, went to a party" but being more honest and open about the party might get me into hot water.

I just wonder to what degree I'll be expected to play the model citizen and to what degree I'll have to hide my personal life from my professional circle.

[knip]

although life shouldn't be this way, my advice is to be very guarded with your colleagues about your personal life...not that i know what that is...but if it concerns you, hide it

this is kind of counter to how i've tried to live my life, although i do hide many things...but it is much more acceptable for a navy guy to be known as a drinker-partyer than a teacher, i think

although i've known a few teachers who were quite open...but i suspect up here in canada we might be a bit more open...not being judgmental, but it's a fact

[Zlatko Waterman]

OK RB:

I'll come out of retirement momentarily, like I did the other time you expressed some admiration for the attractiveness of young girls.

I'll give you an experience or two, and look retrospectively at my own SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) when I was under the public magnifying glass for the 33 years I taught in tax-funded institutions.

I had a colleague, a Mexican gentleman, a very bright guy, but not brilliant, who liked ( when he wasn't teaching Sociology-- he was a full, tenured professor, like me) to go to clubs and pal around with prostitutes. He had some romantic notion of prostitution, as some major ( and not so major) writers have, like Joseph Heller, Hemingway, and Bukowski, not to mention R.B. Kitaj, who's a painter who has written a lot, some of it about "les girls" as he calls them.

Enter a fire-breathing feminist vice-president at our college. The lady also happened to be of Latina heritage, and a lesbian.

She kept her sexual proclivites hidden, though everyone knew. She had a weekly "circle", where her friends met ( all lesbians) for good cheer and drinks and intellectual talk.

But Pedro ( we'll call him) had a way of acting out in the open. He brought some of his lady friends to school, and, not content with that, and having them sitting in his classes to impress them with his erudition before he took them to bed ( sometimes in his office), he also closed in on some rather naive young girls who happened to be students.

His reputation as a Romeo became so conspicuous that Maria ( let's call her), Vice President, decided something had to be done. So, with the collusion of some friends, she laid a honey trap for Pedro, and caught him "in flagrante" with an under-age girl in his office. But that wasn't the only incident from which she gathered evidence. There were dozens of other young ladies who were willing to testify.

Coda: Pedro, a tenured professor, was fired. Maria became President of the college, then continued to climb to a California-level administrative job overseeing a whole college system from the vantage point of Sacramento.

These things can happen, and that is a brief true story from the Naked City.

I am an actor, of sorts. I have always enjoyed playing parts. When I was a tenured professor in the California college system, I did what Marlon Brando counsels in "The Godfather" and "kept my nose clean" and "never dishonor(ed) The Family."

They paid me, clothed and fed me, gave me an office and a title and , in short, kept the wolf out of my life so I could work at my "real" vocation: artist and poet. For that I was ( and am) thankful.

I suppose I was just too frightened to "let it all hang out" as Jane Fonda says in "Klute."

And a quick cost-benefit analysis ( not that I am usually given to such things) and the fate of some colleagues like Pedro seemed a bit of a warning.

I have already, somewhere in these electro-pages, told the story of the Philosophy professor I worked with who took his students to Nepal on a study trip to "grok in fullness"as Heinlein would say,


http://www.scifidimensions.com/Sep03/st ... iction.htm



bedded down with one of them in his sleeping bag, and got himself fired. He also was a tenured full professor.

Now I am retired, an old man somewhat ( but not entirely) emptied of youthful lust, and tamer in every way.

Was it worth it to curtail my "real" longings for adventure and extreme behavior ( which I have always possessed in abundance)?

I think so. But I am lucky, in many, many ways.

And I'm not trying here to picture myself as angelic, or exempt from behavior along the lines of Pedro's.

I have done cataclysmically stupid things as a teacher and gotten away with them.

Pedro and Philosophy Professor Rupert Downbagger didn't.

Knip says it well: " . . .although life shouldn't be this way . . ."

But it is, and public instituions in the US ( and I suspect, Canada, too) expect their teachers to remain quite discreet when it comes to certain kinds of behavior.



Zlatko

[judih]

yes, Zlatko - excellent and well-documented evidence that when in public, one should act with socially acceptable decorum. Private lives must be conducted with utter coolness and discretion.

For example, not once but twice, i have found myself at the end of a very large camera lens, the object of a large mic in full close-up while film students decided to feature me in the context of the use of recreational drugs.

And this was the film excerpt they squeezed out of me:

Q: Do you smoke?
A: No
Q: Have you ever?
A: Cigarettes? I don't believe in poisoning my body. (evading the issue with easily accepted rhetoric).
Q: What about grass?
A: Do you really believe that such a question is justified in a land where grass is illegal?

.......................

and that's how i dealt with 2 different film crews.
Asking me about my personal habits was definitely out of bounds. Yet in the English Center, we have a wonderful webquest about marijuana in order to let students find out the facts, not just the propaganda.

However, when someone wants to know how i spend my freetime, i talk of poetry, walking, biking. I don't mention activities that would land me in jail. And this is the strategy that works best.

Many years of keeping cool in society has made 'coolness' instinctive. Now there are few sudden blurts, unlike when i was younger.

People remember blurts - it's amazing how one moment of impulsivity on my part can be so firmly embedded in another's memory. Beware of a blurt made in the assumption that the other person or people 'understand' where you're coming from.

In general, i'm surrounded by people who don't understand free thinking. When i argue for encouraging free expression in class, i'm often looked upon as if i'm insane - and more than once i've been told that a teacher's job is to instill ways of thinking.

Teachers! yes. uh huh.
Scary!

A regional counselor once cautioned me to keep my ADHD to myself, unless of course i was using it for educational purposes -that is to say, teaching concentration techniques.

But in reference to Terence McKenna, no one i know around here has been able to listen to his talks. So, my path is solo together with my life partner and kids.

Safety first! If i find someone who i truly learn to trust, then i'll venture into what i'm really into. But till then, no!

My shady side is my own!

judih

[Arcadia]

me and my monkey... I don´t know, I think society and parents also expect you to be a bit normal too. Only a bit, of course.

[K&D]

i don't know guys, i definetly will agree that there are lines, but as far as what judith said about always acting in public acting with socially acceptable decroum. i just don't know, i mean that sounds like hiding, and hiding sounds like cowardism....if thats a word.

where's L-rod on this issue, i imagine he feels similarly. i don't care what the teacher does as long as it doesn't directly involve me or my children. and dor about the blog about there personal adventures why not? i mean thats what they do in there spare time, i think weatherman is talking about something different, thats when the private comes closer to directly effecting the school, its distracting from the education of the students, i think, not to mention possibly making those uncomfortable....

example of where someone over steping the boundries of acceptance has helped me. k, so i'm 20 years old right, and i've been talking to a teacher of mine about sex, drugs and philosophy (maybe not sex so much) for the past 4 years. i think he has been a positive influence on my life, but i know the school wouldn't be happy with him if they knew some of the things we've talked about, not to mention, some of the ideas he shared which are not mainstream. i mean somethings are stupidly not P.C, and i think those things should be talked about...i think they should be adressed. sex, drugs, religion, philosophy should all be talked about, but many disagree that these things can not be talked about between someone who is not the parent or someone of a similar age, certain things must never be told to the youth...thats bullshit.

also, dude, look at my relationship with you guys, i've been writting on litkicks when i was pretty young, do you think the stuff you shared with me was somethihng you shouldn't have done, because let me tell you, i'm sure there are many who think so, but i am certainly not one of them.

[Doreen Peri]

K&D said

where's L-rod on this issue, i imagine he feels similarly. i don't care what the teacher does as long as it doesn't directly involve me or my children. and dor about the blog about there personal adventures why not? i mean thats what they do in there spare time, i think weatherman is talking about something different, thats when the private comes closer to directly effecting the school, its distracting from the education of the students, i think, not to mention possibly making those uncomfortable....

My comment was to say that if people want to share their personal lives online, they should use a pseudonym, an alias, and do it anonymously if there is something about their personal lives which society might judge negatively.

Where is L-rod on this issue? I can't speak for him. I can only speak for me and tell you that I continually suggest to him that he discontinue discussing various and sundry aspects of his personal life on the internet which some may not agree to be socially acceptable.

For instance, he admittedly discusses his previous drug addiction. Well, that's all fine and good that he's honest about what he experienced in the past. But it might not be fine and good according to his employer or his neighbors or the parents of my daughter's friends or my daughter's father.

See?

Now, all that is in the past but STILL... unfortunately, just as knip and Zlatko said, this IS the world we live in. People DO judge people based on what they say about their personal lives and how they live them.

Best advice is to keep your personal life to yourself except between trusted friends who share your personal life.

[Lightning Rod]

I think that what Zlatko says is the sensible outlook. For the reasons he states, it is unwise to let your personal life stray into your professional life.

Here is the distinction as I see it: If you want to go drinking or whoring or doping or even watching NASCAR races on your own time, or if you want to dress up like a woman or binge-eat or cruise porn sites on the internet, that should be your business.

What isn't OK is to use a position of professional authority to take sexual or any other kind of advantage of those in your charge. For a teacher or a parent or a shrink or a priest to violate his or her professional role by seducing or allowing a seduction is the sleaziest and most low-life thing I can imagine. Bill Clinton comes to mind.

The problem arises that some professionals are never 'off-duty.' How can a priest be 'off-duty?' A doctor? Is it OK if a teacher dates his student if he does it after hours? No.

This is why Dante reserved the lowest ring of Hell for those in authority who had betrayed the trust of those who depended upon them--priests and popes and kings.

[K&D]

who cares though if someone knows, and its not socially acceptable, maybe it should be, maybe we shouldn't just lie or hide all the time from who we are and waht we do, i mean if it doesn't involve people, then why should it care if they know. i agree to with Zlatko but only because its an abuse of power, if that guy used drugs and he told his students i wouldn't have a problem with that.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear K and D:

I hope I "grok in fullness" when I affirm that I wish someone as generous, warm and enlightened as you are on these questions were making the decision about whether I would stay or go from my teaching job.

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/grok.html


That's usually not the case, and that is an understatement.

The person being judged is most often, in a funny word from another favorite writer of mine, at the mercy of a "granfalloon."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon



--Z

[Doreen Peri]

I used to be an apartment manager (something many of you may not know about me). That was my career for approx. 8 years. I lived on the properties I managed. My apartment was part of my salary.

My job put me in the public eye. My tenants paid rent to me. They thought of me as their landlord. Some would come hang out in my office and tell me sordid details about their lives. Or just tell jokes and talk about the world. I loved them. But it was clear that some of them held me in very high regard, just because I was the one in the office and they were the ones who had to pay me rent. I never quite understood that.

But anyway, it was very important to me during those years to keep my private life as private as can be, especially since I essentially lived with my tenants. We lived right there together in the same community.

Why was it important? Because I needed to retain their respect in order to continue performing my job. If they saw me out drinking and dancing and carousing with gentlemen I knew at a nightclub, they may have gotten the wrong idea about me and misjudged me. Definitely, they would have changed their view about my position of authority.

The position of authority was necessary in order for me to collect the rent on time, make sure they didn't park vehicles up on the grass and work on them, make sure they didn't throw wild parties throughout the night, disturbing other neighbors. I couldn't have parties in my own apartment because if I did, my official letter to them to tell them to turn the music down would have been laughed at. And on and on.

So, I would go to nightclubs a couple of towns away instead, hoping not to run into any of my tenants.

Was it their business what I did in my personal life? No. However, I was careful not to make the impression in front of them that I was anything other than a professional, at all times, even during my off time.

Strange how the world works, yes, but it's all so true. You ARE judged by your lifestyle. I made the mistake one night of partying with one of the maintenance men who worked for me. A couple of months later, I had to page him during the weekend to come fix someone's air conditioning. He laughed on the phone. He told me, "No way! She can wait until Monday. I'm over here at so-in-so's house getting high. No can do." I explained to him that the lady was elderly and had health problems and that it was quite important for him to come fix her air conditioning because without air conditioning, it wouldn't be safe for her. Again, he answered, "Nope. Can't do it," and laughed. He NEVER would have replied to me that way had I not spent that evening before partying with him. Obviously, I had lost his respect as a supervisor.

I didn't know what to do so I called my supervisor at the main office. "Write him up for insubordination," I was advised. "Then, call a contractor. When you get the invoice from the contractor, subtract it from his paycheck."

That's what I had to do. I followed that advice to a T. For a few weeks, I lost a friend, but I gained my maintenance man back and I could continue working in a position which required control of a variety of situations.

-d

ps-
I could relay a story about abuse of power which effected my life negatively. I was taken advantage of by someone in a position of power. I won't bore you with it. Suffice to say that I agree that persons in such positions should not and CANNOT violate the boundaries of a person they have power over.