D-, too much love in the home

I don't make a habit of quoting the Bill Kristol press, but I'm no ideologue: even when you're right, sometimes you're right.

As those who took the blog detour with me already know, I work in the wedding singing business (and just try to find an unredacted entry in this blog that establishes otherwise. No, seriously -- please try, and let me know if I missed anything). Quite reasonably, when anyone in my wedding singing office pens a new tune, we have to run it by our Chief Singer (CS), just to, y'know, make sure we're all singing the same refrain. Somewhat less reasonably, we also have to run it past each CS in somewhere between one to five dozen other offices, for reasons that have always been a bit murky to me but possibly to ensure that we're not stealing each other's best riffs. Or, perhaps, to make sure that we are. Like I said: murky at best.

Anyway, I do more than my share of both penning and clearing, and so I've been given the temporary loan of my own apprentice songstress, S. She's terribly young, awfully pleasant, and allegedly well-educated (though when precisely, I ask you, did they cease teaching grammar at Harvard?). I also can't quite figure out exactly how to interact with her.

The other day, I asked S to compose a very basic little ditty. Task accomplished with alacrity, she then received instructions to clear the thing with our CS, and then with several others. Which she didn't do. Rather, she sent it out for comment to all the outside offices first. I complained; she argued that her way was more efficient, and, anyway, the receptionist (!) said it was ok. I was too busy to pursue the matter, and, besides, I privately figured the best lesson for her would be what I was fairly well nigh certain would happen: our CS, clearing last, would have far more substantive edits than any of the outside offices, and S would have to endure their grumbling and carping when she sheepishly asked for a re-clear.

And I still think that would have happened. What happened first, though, was that outside office #1 went through the freakin' roof: our CS talked with your CS! We agreed! This tune should never have been written! Why are you reneging? I'm going to contact my CS! You'll be sorry you crossed us!

Ok. We do not torture apprentice songstresses. I stepped in, made general apologetic noises, noted that our office had somehow failed to follow established procedure and that our CS had never actually signed off on the tune; we would make it go away; the world would keep spinning. And then I seized the teaching moment and wrote S a gentle little private e-mail saying: hey. No harm, no foul. But this is a really good example of why, when I ask you to do X in Y manner, you really need to do it in Y manner.

And S? Went through the freakin' roof. Oh, not directly hostile. But incredibly haughty and over-formal, in a wounded-pride, wounded-grammar, and not at all contrite way. Me? Yes, I thought direct insubordination resulting in swift negative consequences might merit even a misspelled mea culpa. And I really couldn't help thinking of that lovely reaction of Epstein's, which I may have to modify and get on a rubber stamp just to make it through the summer with the apprentice: Fail. Too much love in the home.

Call it part of my previous railings against too much self-esteem and my praise of doubt. Call it curmudgeonliness. But it isn't just a general trait of mine, it's a generational change out there -- and I fear for us all.