Me and the Wong

We have a new intern at work. While getting her settled into her cramped cubicle, I found myself thinking about one of my very first jobs. I was 20 and landed a summer position as the administrative assistant for Dr. Alfred Wong, an esteemed scientist who headed the experimental and plasma physics lab at UCLA.

What a jackass he was.

Most of the time I didn't see him save for Fridays, when he descended upon our office to confirm that people were working. He would walk methodically down the hallway and call out each postdoc by their last name before entering their lab. "Chu? Smith? Anderson?" You felt like the Supreme Court denied clemency and an execution was imminent. Sometimes there were debates that sounded like a foreign language film. "Electron diffraction?" "Mais no. Optical interactions of coherent radiation? Oui." But mostly the postdocs would say, "Yes, Dr. Wong. Yes," and run around like crazy people for the remainder of the day.

One day Dr. Wong emailed me about a special project. I was floored that he bypassed his main assistant and singled me out. Clearly he was taken with my organizational skills and can-do attitude. I went to his office with my UCLA-issued notebook and pen, ready for action.

Wong looked at me through his thick lenses, the way you would regard an ant at your picnic table. "There is my bag," he commanded, motioning to a gym bag in the middle of his office. "Can you please tidy it up."

I was momentarily confused. Tidy it up? Reshuffle his important papers and books, perhaps? I knelt down before the bag and was overcome by a mouldy odor. I unzipped the top and was met with a pile of tennis socks, a moist headband and a foul-smelling pair of shorts.

Tidy up your freaking tennis bag?

I thought for a moment. "Dr. Wong," I said, "Shouldn't we just put the bag in your car to take home?"

He didn't look up from his book. "But make it neat," he said.

Did he even know my name? My father was a chemist, I was going to UCLA to study history. I wasn't a physics buff and I was never going to get into Harvard, but I was definitely not a lowly serf who was going to clean up this a-hole's mess.

I hovered over the bag for a moment and then zipped it up. "All done. Is there anything else?"

He didn't answer, completely consumed by his book on energy conduction. I worked at the lab for another month and then left to start classes. He never said thank you or good bye. I actually passed him on campus two months later and he looked right through me. It wasn't as if he'd forgotten me. He just never knew I existed.

Ten years later I read a story that his funding had dried up and the university was longer interested in supporting his research. Karma? I'm not sure. People on staff said he was demanding and unkind. Perhaps he was so focused on outer space that he couldn't relate to people on this planet. Whatever the case, he taught me a lot about the kind of boss you shouldn't be.

However, if the intern agrees to pick up my dry cleaning, I'm not going to admonish her...