TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: I am feeling less spacey than I did.

THERAPIST: Good. Glad to hear it. An interesting thing happened. I read the sadhu case, or I read the first half of it, and I want to say it struck me as somewhat different from what you said.

CLIENT: How did you interpret it?

THERAPIST: First, let me say I hope, as I think you do as well, that if I were in that guy's shoes who wrote the case I'd like to think, or I certainly would want to have reacted very differently and done whatever I could do to get him to some place of safety. That's it. He was clearly more mixed about it than you made it sound. He said at one point midway through, and I confess that I stopped reading soon after this, "I feel guilty about it." He did sort of say, "I'm not exactly sure why," but he said he felt guilty; that was one thing. [00:01:44]

CLIENT: Oh, God, I just remembered that. Yeah, which is different.

THERAPIST: I guess the difference I took it and it made it seem a little less hypocritical and it sort of set the other guy up as a little more, in a way, kind of built up his straw man where the other guy was an anthropologist and he was a businessman. Those feelings are very concrete and specific. I guess it read to me and now I'm getting a little less specific like he was at least less cavalier and seemed to take the other guy's question seriously. They had this disagreement/debate and his friend was angry with him for how he acted; but he did seem to at least be trying to question what he had done and he did acknowledge that and also the remedy was not trivial and obvious. I don't think you had said that to walk the guy down to the village would have taken a couple of days; and it was unclear whether the villagers would have been well-disposed towards the guy at all. [00:03:15] And there was some safety issue involved, in that if they wanted to continue on their hike there was some benefit like it was safer to not wait because ice steps were going to melt or something like that, so it's not like there was a town half a day away where they could have brought him and dropped him at a free clinic. Even if they wanted to do the best thing by him at all, it wasn't entirely clear what that was and it would have taken at least a couple of day probably to sort it out. Not to say they shouldn't have done that but, again, it's not like there was... so, again, I find the whole thing about it being a once-in-a-lifetime trip entirely bullshit. I believe it was, but in my mind that doesn't make a difference if somebody's dying. [00:04:17]

CLIENT: I think one of the things that really struck me was the focus on "this is my once-in-a-lifetime trip." That part was really rude. There was also an article Mike wrote and then he did a, not a follow-up, but they republished.

THERAPIST: Some kind of further commentary.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I remember reading an illusion to that, but I didn't actually read it.

CLIENT: The further commentary was weird in that something from the commenter "in the further commentary" he kind of embellishes a little bit more like "Yeah, I never found out what the guy's name was or what happened." But then he kind of like acknowledges the person isn't here anymore, but then backs up and so there was sort of that. My other thing was I felt like it's true, they would have had to backtrack two days but... [00:05:37]

THERAPIST: And he felt guilty because he says he continues to this day to feel guilty, or up to the day that he wrote it.

CLIENT: You know what? I think I just don't believe it. I'm sure he feels bad. I can see he's feeling guilty, but I felt he still stood by what he did, if that makes sense. [00:06:05]

THERAPIST: I think he did. He never, at least the part I read, he did not express regret or indicate that he would do it differently today, but you had (chuckles) made it sound like he was totally callous and cavalier.

CLIENT: I know. [...] (inaudible at 00:06:26) (laughs)

THERAPIST: I know. I know. My point is here's what I'm struck by or one of the things I wonder about.

CLIENT: No, I totally want to hear it. I was half thinking, "She'd read this article."

THERAPIST: Oh, really? That's funny. I had some time and I was like, "I wonder?" Honestly, I guess there are a couple of things that interested me. I'm sort of interested in that part of the world and some of the things in the story; and also I was a little skeptical of what you said because it just seemed to me a little over-the-top that it would have been so unambiguous, as you made it out to be. [00:07:39]

CLIENT: That you should stop or that you should not stop?

THERAPIST: That this fellow's moral bankruptcy was so unambiguous and extreme. I guess I did have a hard time entirely believing that a) nobody else would have stopped and reacted if it was that dramatic; and b) I would in no way champion the ethics of most business school students, but if this has become a classic and people actually talk about it and it provokes interesting discussions in class, I can't imagine it would be so clear and one-sided even for business school students. So I guess I felt it wasn't like I sat and consciously thought, "That's rude," and that's why I decided to read it, but I was sort of curious. [00:09:00] It made me wonder if you were doing the same thing like not recently, but there was a while there I was waving my arms and fussing that when you were feeling strongly about something you would present the story in a way to generate the response in me that you had, rather than having the response that you had more overtly yourself and then telling me what happened. It was like, "Can you believe this? I'm going to show you how people are such complete assholes," or whatever; rather than "Oh, my God. I'm so fucking pissed and these people are such assholes." It wasn't like you were deeply trying to conceal that feeling, you know, so hesitant to admit it. (both chuckle) I always imagine that it was because of anxiety that you felt about your feelings not being valid or your reactions not being valid. Or even if you know at one level that I'm likely to take your feelings and reactions seriously and have some confidence, at another level you're just so used to not having confidence in it that you were sort of trying to arrange the situation so you could then have your feelings and have them be valid; or that I could have them and maybe be valid or something like that. [00:10:41] This seemed a little like that to me. And clearly your crankiness plays a part. You said you were cranky but it, again, was less about the direct expression of being pissed off and cranky, although there was some of that actually part of the problem. Some of it seemed to also bleed into the narrative and facts of what you were describing. I'm not saying you don't have a right to be pissed and disappointed and aghast, in any case, but I'm saying you stacked the deck a little bit. Whatever. It seems psychologically relevant. [00:11:30]

CLIENT: Many years ago when I was working in [...] (inaudible at 00:11:33) department, which was more like six years ago or something, we had a little labor dispute which was the chair of the department we send out reference letters in bulk, basically, for all the grad students. It ends up being my group handled 20 faculty members and each grad student was applying to a couple of places, so we probably sent out easily a thousand letters.

THERAPIST: Wow. Each student is applying to 15 places and needs four letters.

CLIENT: Right, and so we have this whole system for doing it. Part of it and also if you made this time like if were late like if you [...] (inaudible at 00:12:39) and then there was [...] (inaudible at 00:12:40), and the whole shebang. And also students were supposed to...

THERAPIST: I'm sorry the letters were [...] (inaudible at 00:12:49) for faculty? I see.

CLIENT: A lot of times someone would request letters and it was like we just print out a letter. Sometimes we would shove three faculty members' letters into the same envelope because whatever. If a student thought the letter was unfair, they should tell us. This one year the students never we didn't get the complaint. The complaint went to the chair of the department, who then complained back to us via other people, so that was kind of a... [00:13:37]

THERAPIST: What was the complaint?

CLIENT: The complaint was a couple students said that their letters hadn't arrived at some of the schools and they were upset. Normally they would just come to us and say do whatever and we would fax it. We didn't know who they were. Also none of us remembered any students saying well, that's not true. Students would say all the time "Can you overnight it? Can you fax it," and we would. This was when we were still faxing them a lot. [00:14:36] The chair of the department decided that we needed to resend every single letter FedEx. Basically, it was Friday and he wanted them all sent by Monday. He wanted them all prepared to go out by Monday. The three of us were like, "That's a lot of work and that seems like overkill." I think actually people would be annoyed. It's a lot of work. There are other things we could do, like contact universities and whatever, so there were things we could do. He wanted us to work all weekend the department chair which we were getting through the manager of the department. I said, "Okay. I, for one, would like to get delivery pizza for dinner," partially because that day were also buying delivery dinner for the junior faculty. They got a delivery dinner once a month or once a week. [00:15:48] I wanted us to get dinner and I wanted comp time for the weekend. This was what I wanted for me. My department manager is kind of like, "Well..." I was like, "This is what I want. I'll do it." One person was like, "I have kids and day care." Also we're not allowed to work more than five hours extra without approval. [00:16:22]

THERAPIST: In theory, protective of you.

CLIENT: Right, because 35 to 40 hours straight time, so anything over 40 hours is time and a half. So if you work more than those five hours, it's still protective of the employee and the department has to pay out like crazy because it's time and a half and could eventually become double time. I think, in our case, it would become maybe time and a half and maybe time and three-quarters, depending on how many hours you worked. I was going back and forth on this and the department chair basically was finally like, "Fuck it. Do it. Good bye," but he wouldn't approve anything. I was like, "Okay," so I went to the department manager. I was like, "I want these things." She, the department manager, and another person were basically like, "I don't understand why you're insisting on all of these things." I'm like, "Well, I don't know, because it's like reasonable... " [00:17:41]

THERAPIST: You said, you think...

CLIENT: I felt it was unreasonable to have us to work all this weekend without compensation of some kind. I was like, "I don't want money, I just want a day off."

THERAPIST: Oh, I see. So compensation doesn't mean money it just...

CLIENT: Yeah. It means that usually it's done invisibly.

THERAPIST: I get it. So you work on a Saturday and you take some Wednesday off. I get it.

CLIENT: Exactly, which is what everyone does. In September like if you work extra time in September or October, you have a couple of three-day weekends or whatever. I just got this very heavy pressure back saying no, that I should be a team player and I should just stay and work. [00:18:32]

THERAPIST: Was the question hanging over all of this about whose fault this was that this had happened? Were they kind of summarily assuming that this was your guys' fault?

CLIENT: The department chair insisted it was our fault entirely and he said he didn't think we were competent or could be trusted to follow up because he felt we had made some mistake in sending out letters. He didn't want us to follow up with the schools to ask if they had the letters because he didn't it was kind of unclear. It seemed like either he thought that we wouldn't do it or that we would lie about it. He didn't think that was an acceptable answer either, but he did want us to redo all the work. It's like two months' work, this job. [00:19:31]

THERAPIST: Yeah. It was over the course of two months or whatever. I'm sorry. I have some questions.

CLIENT: Yeah. It was a really rude situation.

THERAPIST: Did you guys also think it was your fault?

CLIENT: We weren't sure. What we figured is, because they were like well, things always slipped through, and I'm like, "It could have been our fault. We could have missed someone's letter or address. The other people could have lost the reference as well." It could have been either side. What we were more concerned about was that we wanted to know who it was, in part so we could redo it, but in part so we could see if there was a pattern. What happens is whenever a student told us someone didn't get a letter we would be like, "All right. Let's look at our process and see what happened." And sometimes you could see... [00:20:37]

THERAPIST: Did the letter not go out at all or did it just go to some schools or...

CLIENT: Right. And usually you could see that it seemed like a FedEx got lost or maybe we missed it or we weren't clearly usually you could look at it and you'd be like, "Oh. It's really this problem."

THERAPIST: But they wouldn't give you that information.

CLIENT: Right, because the department chair said the students were worried about retaliation, which was weird. I was like, "What are we going to do? We're secretaries." Whatever. It was just very weird because it didn't really make any sense to me or to us. He just left. He was like, "I'm going away for the weekend. Good bye." And so a bunch of us were like, "Okay..." [00:21:40]

THERAPIST: Right. That was the department manager.

CLIENT: So the head of the department just left for the weekend. The department manager wasn't around and I'm like, "We can call her." Whatever. I'm trying to figure out what I could do. I was getting heavy pressure from the person below the department manager to just work all weekend. I said I would totally work the first five hours and I'd do it, but I wasn't going to work more than five hours. I was like, "Look, we're not going to [...] (inaudible at 00:22:15) this department. Workers are supposed to be compensated for their labor. I'm a member of a union. You're violating my union contract. I know what you want, but what you want, I think if we knocked on some doors people might be like ‘screw it.'" In fact, one or two faculty members were like, "What are you talking about?" Of course I should be compensated. The faculty couldn't make that... [00:22:47]

THERAPIST: Right. It was either the chair or the office manager.

CLIENT: Yeah, or someone else like that.

THERAPIST: Department manager, yeah.

CLIENT: Then it became this weird thing where someone else was like, "Well, I'll do it uncompensated." I'm like, "Yeah, but you're not involved in our system. You don't know how it works." Blah, blah, blah. She was like, "It never worked with us." And was kind of really back-stabby, so then there was this person who didn't know what we were doing, didn't understand, and was kind of back-stabby. It was a disaster. It went very poorly. We got tons of return letters because we were doing it so quickly. We made errors doing it quickly. [00:23:28]

THERAPIST: The end result was you guys actually ended up going in?

CLIENT: I worked five hours and was like "fuck you." My fellow the two people actually enrolled were like, "Nope." This was Friday, so we were doing it until 10:00. I was like, "No."

THERAPIST: The other two people you worked with did the same?

CLIENT: Yeah. We kind of were like, "Do we all agree to this?" This other person was finally like, "Fine. Then I'm just going to take it all home." Blah, blah, blah.

THERAPIST: The back-stabber? [00:23:59]

CLIENT: The back-stabber. And part of my thing was that the way this is the way that we had it set up: We would also divvy up the FedEx forms on the computer, which is awesome. But, because of all the various things, we had to hand-write all the FedEx slips.

THERAPIST: Oooh. A thousand of them?

CLIENT: Yeah. I mean, not in the end because [...] (inaudible at 00:24:26), but hundreds. So we got tons of returns.

THERAPIST: Because you just made mistakes.

CLIENT: Yeah, or they couldn't read the handwriting or whatever. It was nuts. It went to the union, who read the letter. I wrote a letter explaining the situation. [00:24:52]

THERAPIST: It went to the union?

CLIENT: It went to the union to complain.

THERAPIST: The three of you?

CLIENT: The three of us went to the union to complain and the union asked for a statement of what had happened, so I wrote one up and the rest of my team agreed with it and I sent it off. The union rep was like, "This is a really great letter that we can't use because the only conclusion we can draw from this letter is, first, that you could make the argument that there wasn't any [...] (inaudible at 00:25:25)." The argument was we were being unfairly asked to work without compensation. He was like, "Yeah, you can't. That's not a negotiating tool." [00:25:37]

THERAPIST: I see. So it would have been a good legal argument, but it's not a good start of negotiation. Like that?

CLIENT: He was like "This is a really persuasive letter that isn't the way to start a negotiation because there's no where to go."

THERAPIST: It's a combination, I guess.

CLIENT: I wrote it like I would write an essay. I have an introduction and I will prove this happened.

THERAPIST: Probably a condemnation. I understand that you thought of it as an essay and so forth. I guess my point is...

CLIENT: No, no. I was pissed. I know I was angry. In my opinion I was like, "There is only one answer."

THERAPIST: It may well deserve the condemnation.

CLIENT: Yeah. I felt very strongly about what I was writing and I do want to make a persuasive statement that indicates what I think is the right and wrong thing that happened. First he was like, "We can't use this." Then he was like, "Do you want to run for the union?" (both laugh) No, thank you. So that was fun. Yeah. I don't know. [00:26:55]

THERAPIST: Like what was your point.

CLIENT: My humanities training certainly taught me how to write a persuasive argument, so there is that. The other thing about the sadhu article was also that I think part of why I stacked the deck so hard against the businessman is partly because I thought we were going to have this discussion about like I thought there was going to have a longer discussion about that ethical conflict.

THERAPIST: You mean with your classmates or between you and I?

CLIENT: In that article. I thought the article was going to be about that, so I'm like, "I don't understand what just happened." It's not totally black and white. He did come up with all of these reasons, but I'm like, "I understand that you have all these reasons. I get you want to do this and I get that you didn't want to back-track two days. I get all of that. I think you're wrong." I guess what I felt, in large part, was that he did say it was in the moment and I thought about it more mudded in my mind or whatever. [00:28:41]

THERAPIST: He actually holds himself responsible. He says it was the heat of the moment, you don't have much time, "I was really excited about..." whatever.

CLIENT: Yeah, he was rushed.

THERAPIST: He says, "On the one hand, maybe if I had more time to think about it I would have decided differently." And then he says, "But on the other hand, that's kind of true of a lot of really important situations or situations that draw on our character values." In other words, I guess it read to me as though he wasn't easily going to let himself off the hook in saying that he was rushed. I read it that he found it to be a bit of a cop-out to say, "I was rushed. If I had more time to think about it..." or something like that. [00:29:39]

CLIENT: Yeah, I don't know. I think, in the end, I still had this very strong like, "This is your vacation, dude," and I don't know. I guess it was hard because I know that we all think, "No. In that situation I would totally have done that," and often in that type of situation you don't for a variety of reasons.

THERAPIST: The part that I find most interesting is that you've (chuckles) actually misrepresented it and actually made it sound more one-sided than it was. As best I can tell, I kind of personally am on your side, but I have to agree with you that I think it's ridiculous to let a vacation, however stupendous, get in the way of getting somebody who might die to a relatively safe and secure situation or something like that. Yeah, that's the part I find interesting. (chuckles) [00:31:19]

CLIENT: Yeah. I really didn't remember it was the anthropologist. It's funny because I also know that I'm bringing in my own thoughts about the trend towards the way westerners going on vacation, especially in the Himalayans and Everest and doing these hikes that they're not really ready for necessarily. And, much more with Everest, the part of dying and the ways in which the Nepali people and the porters are both making money but getting exploited also in weird ways and there is this whole thing. Then there's the cultural tourism in general. I think he would have risked that and given him more respect if they were like a Catholic ethnic. [00:32:36]

THERAPIST: Absolutely, let alone some well-dressed, middle-aged, white woman. Absolutely.

CLIENT: Yeah. And then there's the sort of...

THERAPIST: That Nepali in a loincloth. Sure.

CLIENT: Yeah. It was kind of like, "Really? Ugh." I was thinking of [...] (inaudible at 00:32:56) "In order to fix one life, I will go to India."

THERAPIST: Is that what...?

CLIENT: There are a lot of things she does, but, yeah, the sort of unkind version is it sounded like this woman had sort of a mid-life crisis and was like, "Dear husband, I've got to go. I'm getting a divorce and I'm going to go to Italy and eat a lot of pasta. Then I'll go to India and spend a lot of money doing the things that you do and the simple people of India will inspire me to discover love and happiness through..." Blah. There is this whole narrative of going to India and seeing the elephant and you're like, "Oh, my God. They're so primitive" thing. [00:33:53]

THERAPIST: Right. This is going to help remind you what life is all about.

CLIENT: Yeah. They possess the secret of joy because they're so simple or exotic or whatever.

THERAPIST: Savage thing?

CLIENT: Yeah. And particularly like, "Why do you need to go to India?" I really want to go to India, too, and I figure a lot of complicated things around being someone who's from the U.S. must go to India that get really weird and complicated. Also missionaries and there are like a whole tangle of baggage, shall I say, that I have about this person. [00:34:49]

THERAPIST: Sure. Maybe I'm not being fair to you but, again, I don't know if it helps but he's on a six-month sabbatical from a big financial firm where he's worked a long time.

CLIENT: He's like "Nepal" And I'm like, "Yeah, and similarly..." When I was in the [...] (inaudible at 00:35:12) department, that department chair would come to hold a meeting with all the staff. He came in and was so this is crazy like, "Well, you know. Nobody really wants to be department chair because it's annoying." We were like, "All right. Sure." [...] (inaudible at 00:35:38) He had mentioned that he was on vacation in a house in the Swiss Alps. "I was on vacation in the Alps and I got this phone call about being department chair," and we're all kind of like hold up. (both laugh) [00:35:59]

THERAPIST: Really?

CLIENT: Yeah. Because he's just going on about it a little bit and basically his awesome trip to the Alps was ruined by being asked to be department chair and we're all like, "Could you give us a raise?" basically. It was a very off point. He came back to it another time towards the end where he was like, "I just want to be back in the Alps." [00:36:50]

THERAPIST: So it had that almost colonial aspect of it and the entitled aspect of it.

CLIENT: Yeah. My own personal desire is the discomfort that I totally want to go to India and do that well not that but... and I feel rude about it.

THERAPIST: We should stop.

CLIENT: I'm glad you were there. (both laugh)

THERAPIST: Yeah. Me, too.

CLIENT: I guess I'll see you on Wednesday.

THERAPIST: I'll see you on Wednesday not Tuesday?

CLIENT: No. Tuesday, you're correct. Sorry/

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