Cleft Lips and Unamusingly Horrible Bosses

by A Lady

My issue, to get right down to it, is that I have a cleft lip. (It has been repaired and all that, but a repaired cleft still doesn’t look exactly like a normal upper lip.) And in the almost-27 years of my life so far, I haven’t been able to figure out how much it matters “socially.” Like, I’m sort of shy anyway, but I’ve never had a proper boyfriend, and I can count on one hand the men who have been professedly interested in me, in more than a “well we’re in a bar and it’s two am and I’d quite like a shag” kind of way. I’m not personally into one-night stands. Consequently, I have had sex precisely once, with a guy who I thought was into me but as it turns out, into me enough to have sex with me but not into me enough to be an item. This has, rightly or wrongly, probably made me a lot more neurotic about my looks. I know that everyone has flaws, and that is often what makes someone attractive, but I think we can all agree that a serious facial deformity is a different matter entirely.

So I guess I have two questions. First, are there any other cleft-lip Hairpinners out there? What’s your experience with the opposite sex? And secondly, from anyone’s perspective — what do I do? Of course like anyone else I’d like to be loved, but I’m fairly pragmatic, and if cruel old nature means I’m destined to be a spinster I can adjust to that. But I don’t want to give up unnecessarily! But I equally don’t want to delude myself. I keep getting my hopes up and then being crushed, which I know happens to everyone, but it cuts pretty deep when you have good reason to think maybe no one will ever want you!

(1) I assume there are other cleft-lip Hairpinners out there, because there have been other cleft-lip folk everywhere else I’ve ever been. And yes, a repaired cleft lip doesn’t look exactly like a normal lip, but the ones I’ve seen have been not terribly dramatic, which is why I’d even presume to Answer A Lady. That said, both the literature (look! the literature!) and just “duh” tell us that you will have particular self esteem issues and stressors that people without things about their faces won’t have, though the impact of those stressors on your quality of life is indeterminate and everyone’s methodology is flawed, META-ANALYSIS OUT, mic drop.

And maybe you know this, but there are actual psychologists/therapists who specialize in working with people with craniofacial abnormalities — everything is a job! (No, that actually seems like a really awesome and important job.) Call up the craniofacial surgeon closest to you and ask for a referral — it can’t hurt. Or, maybe it can? Maybe you will get an evil or incompetent therapist — everything is a job! But probably not.

(2) Here is what you tell me: “I have a thing with my face + people have expressed attraction to me, though I haven’t been into them so far + one dude I was into was DTF but not DTBMBF (be my boyfriend) = NO LOVE, GIVE UP.” That’s not pragmatic, that’s distorted to the point of making no sense. It’s also lazy, because it leaves you with nowhere to intervene. If your actual face bones and other people’s behavior controlled your fate, you might as well just wait to die.

REEEFRAAAME (airhorn blast): Let’s plug in the actual evidence we have. “I get attention from guys sometimes, but in part because I have a thing with my face I’m prone to experiencing anxiety about seeming attractive and lovable. I’m pretty sexually inexperienced, and my main experience to date compounded this anxiety, so right now I have to work especially hard to recognize and temper it.”

So how to temper it? Well. First off. You don’t deserve love. You should try to get out of shitty situations, and you should hope for and seek pleasant and fulfilling ones, but that’s self-preservation. You can behave in certain ways, and encourage those around you to behave in certain ways, but you can’t stomp your feet demanding specific feelings from the universe.

The good news is, no one else deserves love either. But a lot of people still want it desperately, whatever it is. It feels stabilizing and/or exciting and/or something. And billions of us are out there, looking for whatever this thing is that we’ve identified as love, seeking, poking, fucking up, grasping, eager to connect because we have love to give or because we like having someone to manipulate, or because we want someone to understand our weirdness or, or, or. Striving for connection.

And ugly people are there striving too. I don’t have any idea whether or not you’re ugly, but you’re really eager to convince me you are, so hey. Yes, structural critique of restrictive beauty standards, etc., but playing the cards we’re dealt in the universe in which we are dealt them. . . if being unpretty made you unlovable, the top 50% would all be in love with each other, and the bottom 50% would just skulk around in a perpetual state of resentful unrequited love for the pretty people. That’s demonstrably untrue — we have enough humans for everyone, I promise. If you want one human, or several, you can probably get them eventually. Maybe it’ll take longer than it would take Miss Perfectface. Maybe you’ll have to make different kinds of compromises. But you know, you learn from the striving and the compromise too. You have a special incentive to look at people more closely, listen to them with more empathy, to take interesting chances.

Speaking of which, there’s probably some lovely bunch of guys there with repaired cleft fetishes (or you know, with repaired clefts themselves). Now that’s on my search history, thanks. (Other recent searches: “Make Up Forever HD 107 swatch” “bathhouse reservations” “oarfish” and “evil horse.”) It doesn’t seem like you have to turn off safesearch just yet, though. You say you can count the spontaneous professions of love you’ve received on one hand — that’s pretty good, spontaneous professions of love are not really a thing. I have lived a life, people seem okay with my facehead, and the only person who for sure confessed a crush, like, CRUSH on me was this guy we called Dirtyfoot when I was 16. Also — guys hit on you when you go out! You go out! Here’s a thing You Should Do: So, okay fine, yes it’s some bar dude, his priority is getting laid that night, but I mean, he’s RIGHT THERE, doing most of the work for you. You can say “I’m headed out early, but give me a call sometime” and sometimes he will! Often not, but it’s not unheard of. Or tell him you’ll call him, if you will. Also yes hobbies, internet, groups of whatever, but look, there’s a change you can make without changing ANYTHING ELSE. It’s EASY.

Finally. This dude who you slept with who then did not want to date you. Look. Sleeping with people and then not dating them is pretty normal. A pretty normal thing happened. It gives you no info about your overall loveability. I am sorry you suffered mismatched expectations, those suck. So here is Thing 2 You Should Do: I’d imagine that if you want to date someone, unless you are sure you’ve got your YCRAM down cold, it’s either good to have a conversation before banging (doesn’t happen, is like emotionally-responsible-equivalent of condom-during-bjs) or to hang out in a romantic-style-situation and make out a couple of times before sex. This isn’t some cow/milk rules or whatever, it’s just a way of getting information. If dude is dating you, he’s probably into dating you. If dude is banging you, he might be into dating you or he might be into banging you, you have no information.

And yeah, you might have a relatively romance-free life, but you won’t know that until you’re dead, and then you’ll be dead. You’re only 27, and people fuck and fall in love FOREVER. You don’t have to opt in or out, just drift along. Hey, there are crazy STD transmission rates in nursing homes. What I am saying is, hang out at more nursing homes, but use protection.

I’ve been recently plagued by lots of guilty feelings for living so far away from my family. This has been going on since I moved away for college — just an hour and a half drive but nobody was happy about it. After that I moved across the country for an opportunity to do some national service and now am too far for any of my family to afford to visit me. That wasn’t my intention, it just sort of happened. And, to be honest? I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I have a lot of creative, fun, and worthwhile opportunities ahead of me and I’m feeling like an actual adult — paying my own bills, goin’ out, and making my own decisions. So, the problem is that I come from a family that is slowly dying from self-destruction. We used to be really big and happy and now family functions serve as a reminder that everyone’s dying off, addicted, or incarcerated. Numbers just keep dwindling. Shit just keeps happening. First, my parents feel like they are drowning because of the economy. Weekly phone calls from my mother are about how much she hates the job she feels she had to take after a year of crushing unemployment. We talk about my dad. He feels such immense pressure to pay the bills he can’t say no to 16-hour days.

Second, I’m very close with my extended family, but they are mostly all addicted, dating addicts, or making really risky choices in front of police. There are a handful of my cousins that are like younger siblings to me. I feel like i’m just waiting for the text or phone call that says something happened to them or they dropped out of school to join a gang from the area (which has happened, y’all. I’m not just wringing my hands on this one). So, I told you all of that to explain that I feel like I should move back home and help. My parents supported me my whole life, and when something goes terribly wrong they are always there. I feel like I’m missing the point. I work with community-based projects in cities and states I’m not from and talk about the importance of community, but I’m a total hypocrite in leaving mine. I should be home, right? Helping them financially and being there emotionally? What about my cousins? Shouldn’t I be available for them? Helping with homework and spending quality time? We all can’t afford to keep flying around to visit each other. I guess I’m worried that phone conversations are just not enough. But then what about all the great things I have going here? I’m finishing school, working with kids, and delving into my hobbies and creative ventures. I have all these opportunities that I guarantee are not available in my small hometown. What should I do? Am I stupid for feeling so guilty? Thanks in advance.

I feel like common wisdom could give you one of two answers here. One is “you have to live your own life and figure out what you want before you can really take care of anyone else.” I think “figure out what you want” is dumb and inhumane advice, and the day I give it, Old Yeller me stat. The other is “growing up is thinking of people besides yourself and making decisions based on their best interests.” This is basically a setup for you to feel bad all the time, and also assumes you know anyone’s best interests. Or that they do.

And neither of these approaches is going to fix your problem. Your family is getting fucked. Your dad — no one should be working 16-hour days on the regular. Not autoworkers, not bankers, not doctors or models or candlestick makers. And your mom, well, you don’t have to love your work, but you shouldn’t have to spend most of your waking hours in a situation that makes you miserable and fearful. Your cousins who are getting in trouble need to change out of their bad idea jeans, but if they see people who do follow the script rewarded with soul-crushing jobs that still don’t make them enough to get by, well, why wouldn’t they engage in some pretty antisocial out-opting behavior? And A Lady has a lot to say about the politics of incarceration, but we’re trying to fit this all on one website.

So there are these huge structural problems exposed by the crumbling economy, and your family is kind of trapped by them. (The folks dying is also I guess a structural problem of sorts. But at a whole different level.) And you are smart and brave and love them, and you think if you were there, you’d offer them comfort, and help them avoid particular perils. That’s putting a lot of faith in your own perspective and ability to spot those perils. Are you going to help your little cousins more by doing their (probably stupid, honestly) homework with them, or by talking with them on chat, telling them about your exciting, meaningful work, having some of them come stay with you one summer? How much does your actual physical presence, with hugs and random silly hanging out downtime count for, and how much can you achieve by being the cool older cousin living in a productive and engaged way, and communicating that possibility to them? Your parents would love to have you around, I’m sure, but would the emotional support you could offer balance out any guilt they might feel about taking you away from a life you enjoyed? Or any resentment you might feel? As far as financial contributions, with your mom in a job she hates and your dad breaking his back, it doesn’t sound like you’re from Job City. Will you have better financial opportunities there than where you are?

None of these are rhetorical questions, I don’t have answers and I don’t think you’ll develop good answers except through experience: You’re not going to sit down with a cup of tea and rest your chin thoughtfully in your palm for a few hours and discover for a fact that you will provide level five help and level two guilt to your parents. I guess what I’d suggest is being as generous with yourself as you would with others, and gathering evidence from people who’ve been in the same place. What kind of life would you want for your little cousins? Would you want them to take some time away, pursuing their own interests, exploring, and then possibly coming back when they were a bit older, maybe ready to have kids? Or would you want them to put the family first, unrelentingly supporting the people who have been there for them? The Grown Ups you admire the most — what sort of choices have they made? How do they feel about those choices in retrospect?

The one thing I don’t want you to worry about is feeling hypocritical for working on community-based solutions when you’re not in your home community. First, we can become parts of a community in a lot of different ways. Second, you have enough on your plate with your family and school and outside interests; if this is the work you want to do long-term, maybe you’ll decide, eventually, that you will have more leverage in the place you come from, but don’t make that call now. Doing something you have any ethical commitment to already puts you ahead of the game. (My approach so far has been to work at jobs at odds with my general belief-style setup, and then just do them pretty badly — advancing the revolution, one gchat about feelings at a time.) Striving for ethical purity’s just going to have you beating yourself up at a time when you need to be strong for the people you love and who love you.

I need advice about what to do about a juicebox boss… I just started a new job (yay for jobs!), but my boss is very stressful. I am generally confident in my work and self, but she makes me feel pretty bad. Shaky, sweaty, mind-racing kind of bad. I think the problems are as follows: 1. I’m new and don’t know the job all that well. 2. She has a tendency to be really INTENSE about any small mistake made, to the point that I have been quadruple-checking my work and making myself crazy. 3. She is inconsistent about what makes her angry. Also I’m not good at being yelled at? I HATE IT. Can you tell me how to deal?

Generally, bosses are people, with strange preferences and inconsistencies and we learn how to navigate their personalities. Yes, there are different standards for professional behavior, but also can we not pretend that work isn’t just one big smashglob of humans with personalities who have interactions with each other? Standards for professional behavior work about as well as standards for any other kind of behavior — that is, okayish? Maybe met by 60% of people 60% of the time?

Anyway, a lot of what you are freaking out about sounds like pretty normal new job jangles — 1, 2 and 3 sound pretty interconnected. I want to talk about the yelling separately. But first:

The learning curve doesn’t just apply to software you’re using, or the status of the projects you came into or whatever, it applies to figuring out the workplace culture and the personalities of people you’re working with and for. It includes learning information like “Belinda starts geting bitchy when the deadline is three hours away, so I want to clear stuff with her before then.” Or “Belinda is evil and I want to interact with her only over email as much as possible.” And you will learn that stuff. You just will. You say you’re quadruple checking your work — is that working out? Maybe you’ve learned Belinda has a bug up her ass about comma placement, so you’d better quadruple check it. (Really, after the second check, give it to someone else for a third if at all possible. Fresh eyes are important.) If it makes you feel better and it shuts Belinda up at all, go with it.

Or maybe you really just are driving yourself crazy, and you’ll figure out the point at which the marginal benefits of an extra readthrough are like, not worth it. Because, job wisdom, they (where They = The Man) don’t want to fire you. Even in a shit economy where they could find someone new pretty fast, it takes time and money to find and train that person. And that person might well have the same problems you do. If they can make you into an acceptable fit, they would rather do that. You’re not walking on a tightrope — more like a kind of narrow bridge.

In controlling for your inconsistent, intense boss: One thing I have learned is that bosses never want what they say they want the first time around, so you have to guide them through the Asking For Stuff and then hold them accountable for what they asked for later. Always carry a pad of paper, and always repeat everything your boss asks of you, until they agree with what they just said. Then WRITE THAT DOWN.

So Belinda comes over.

Belinda: I need you to shift over to a new project for me ASAP.

You: (Write “Belinda — convo 12/25/11” on top of the paper. WRITE IT.) So, you need me to shift over ASAP. Is this priority over the Wieden account?

Belinda: Hm, no, ASAP after that.

You: So I will start on this as soon as I finish the Wieden account?

Belinda: Yes. (Now WRITE DOWN “To Do ASAP after Weiden account.” Write the stupid ASAP too). I need to know if there are conflicts between the Schock account and the Valentine account we want to take on. In particular, conflicts from them sitting on the same boards.

You: You want to know if there are conflicts between Schock and Valentine, particularly if either of them are on any of the same boards.

Belinda: No, Jesus, get it straight. I KNOW they’re both on the Save Beatnik Beach board, I want to know if that’s a conflict of interest for us.

You: You want me to see if representing two clients on the same board is within our conflict of interest policy.

Belinda: Yes, ASAP.

You: (WRITE DOWN “See if representing two clients on the same board (S+V) is within our conflict of interest policy.”) ASAP after Weiden, right?

Belinda: No, NOW. God. Do I have to tell you everything twice? (You: cross out first instruction, write PRIORITY).

Can you feel the silver torrents of success spilling on your head yet? I mean, what this admittedly tedious procedure does is (1) make your boss think they are interesting and important, (2) give you documentation of the conversation that you can refer them back to (“there must be some confusion — on 12/25 you explicitly instructed me to look at board membership”), and (3) when they pitch a fit anyway, you can rest assured it’s because they’re crazy and fickle, and not because you have a hearing problem.

But. There’s fickle and then there’s nasty. I want to assure you that you are not “bad at being yelled at.” Rather, being yelled at sucks. Yelling happens, and most of us do it, but it’s violent. It’s not hitting, but then, hitting isn’t stabbing, and stabbing isn’t keeping a basement family. Yelling in the workplace gets kind of a pass — probably some macho Gordon Gecko bullshit, and unfortunately some people slide way too easily into that role when they find themselves with any power. (Like, seriously, we know you’re our boss. Your title is Our Boss. Chill.)

When my Ladies get yelled at at work, they bust out all sorts of tactics. One asked her boss if he spoke to his wife that way — but her boss has a wife, and I guess doesn’t speak to his that way. Some yell back. Some nod. Some cry (I mean cry right there. Everyone cries in the bathroom after). My excellent tactic is to apologize, brood, and then quit inadvisedly a few days later. These basically fall into “challenging” or “acquiescing,” both have their risks. You’ll need to find your own individual yellee style.

What you do need to remember is that when you get yelled at, your only problem is that you were in a room with someone who yelled at you. It’s not that YOU ARE SO GODDAMN DENSE, or that HOUSE STYLE IS PERFECTLY CLEAR ON WHEN WE USE EM DASHES. Your only problem is that you work for someone who is yelling. When a crazy guy on the street yells at you that you’re the beast with six heads, it’s weirdly startling and upsetting, but you know your problem is that that guy is crazy. If there are facts that you need to know in the yelled words (there’s a house style?), remember them if you want — or don’t. Collective Hairpin Action, we don’t have to remember anything that’s yelled at us? Just absorb as little of that anger as possible.

And honestly, if the yelling keeps happening and it isn’t possible to just roll your eyes and be like, “there goes Belinda again,” well. . .perpetually yelling bosses are not just something out there in the Real World you have to accept, they’re juiceboxes to be avoided. I’m not saying quit without a backup, but think real carefully about your options. We need money, and a lot of us need some external structure, and neither of those things grow on trees, unless you count bark as external structure I guess? Or if you use acorn money. Oh god, now I have marginalized all the elves. BUT ANYWAY all the structure and the money isn’t going to help you if you are trying to keep ahead of a runaway bigrig every day. Metaphorically or in fact.

Previously: Cheat-ees and Friends With Prosecco.

A Lady is one of several rotating ladies who know everything. Do you have any questions for A Lady?