The Gray Ghost

Work conference personal post alert. Without getting too personal I’ll say I spend most of my work-a-day in a dog-eat-dog environment. By no means is it “cut throat.”  No one is actively seeking another’s metaphorical demise in order to move higher up the ladder.  But one does learn that eventually, should he ascend high enough, he will be called upon to perform a coup de grace.  Better to decide well in advance how one will face all that. My very first boss – whom I was rather close to and worked very closely with – was a 5-2 90 pounds-wet lady we called “The Gray Ghost.”  I never heard her utter a cuss word. I never heard her raise her voice.  But she was an inexorable cold hearted, merciless wraith of a being. She would tear your throat out and be off to her evening plans as untroubled as a lark. When I read Edith Hamilton describe Atropos, I always think of the Gray Ghost. I remember very early on in our work relationship she was discussing – she wasn’t one “to complain” – a colleague she had been annoyed with.  She asked my thoughts. “Well,” naively, “if he’s been doing good work and now not, maybe he has something going on outside of work.”  She stopped. “No.  He’s never been strong. And people don’t change. The only thing you can change in a bad colleague is his employment status.”  He was gone soon enough; walked out by security. There was an urban legend she asked him at that last, fateful interview right before she calmly told him he would never work there again if he had ever “read even one of” her books.  He was unable, so the legend runs and perhaps too nervous or perhaps too defiant to the end, to come up with a title.  The Gray Ghost.