Guess I'm blessed...

because my department is remarkably free of the taxonomy of academic whackjobs, as described by Right Wing Prof.

(Okay, I admit it: I'm a bit of a Perky. I'm the one who happily teaches the 8 am slots; I'm the one who's not only in and functional, but cheerful and prepared for the day, at 7 am. I am not so perky come 5 pm, but there has to be some balance in life).

That said, I've seen some academic malcontents (some where I am now, in other departments. Some at other universities). So I'm going to add to the good Prof's list with a few of my own.

The Everyone-is-out-to-get-me

This person, when he's not given the committee assignment he requests, pouts. Not because he has been assigned to Academic Appeals or some such committee that's ten times the work of the others, but because he didn't get his choice and that's because everyone else hates him. If he doesn't get promotion when he thinks he should, no amount of explaining that the people who DID get promotion had eight published papers in the last five years, and had spoken at national conferences, and had brought in a sizable grant, and he had done none of those things: it's that people are somehow prejudiced against him.

It is exhausting dealing with these kinds of people; my general strategy is to avoid them, or if that's not possible, to conjugate German verbs in my head while periodically nodding as they talk.

The grievance-deliverer

This is the person who, no matter what the meeting topic is, has to bring up his or her own personal hobbyhorse: there's no reduced-rate health insurance for "domestic partners," only for spouses. Day care is only offered for the time you're actually in class, not for office hours. The room where I teach is too cold. We let in students with ACT scores that are too low. And on, and on.

It matters not that the complaint about the lack of domestic-partner insurance is being voiced at a meeting whose purpose is to plan the allocation of library funds for the coming year. The person has to be heard. He or she thinks that the more people that hear the complaint, the more people will rally to their cause.

The Hatfields and McCoys

I was once alarmed on a campus (not the one I am at now) when I asked a faculty member (I was a student at the time) where Dr. Xs office was. He pointed down the hall and said, "End of the hall. If I had a gun, I could shoot him from here."

I later found out (I was a fairly new student at the time) that that was the general tone of their relationship. It was well-known among the other faculty and the experienced grad students that you NEVER put the two together on a committee, even though their areas of expertise were somewhat complementary. Because if you did, you'd never graduate - your meetings with your committee would quickly devolve into an argument between those two.

I thought that was the most stupid and petty thing I've ever heard. I still think it's stupid and petty - the faculty's main interest should be in getting the students prepared, graduated, and out into a job. Not silly little turf battles.

the self-important swelled-head

This is the person who has posted the Literature Cited of EVERY paper that has ever referred to something he wrote on his door. (I'm using the male pronoun here because every one of these I've known has been male; I don't discount that women could be this way though). This is the person who always has to remind you of the grants they've been awarded, in chronological order. This is the person who is constantly "justifying" their existence by pointing out all the "great" things they have done (when in most cases those things are really not that different from what the rest of the professoriate does). I've just come to assume these folks are deeply insecure and so I nod and smile and make approving noises when they go on and on about how some obscure Hungarian researcher has cited their work in her most recent paper.

The "hey, could you get this for me"?

These are the people that you wonder at: how did they make it through grad school? Did their moms live with them? Did they have a spouse who did everything?

These are people who have no sense of time: they are always late for meetings, they never have things done when they should have them done. They often have "forgotten" their wallets or purses when you go out to lunch, meaning someone in the group has to "get" their meal for them (and woe unto that person if they come requesting to be paid back).

These are also people who often just have little black clouds of trouble following them around: weird stuff happens to them. They contract strange diseases. Their children get into strange trouble at school. And then the people have to take time off - these are the people that the "personal leave banks" are developed for. They are also frequently asking colleagues: "Oh, hey...could you take my 9 and 10 am non-majors lectures next week? I kind of have to be out of town..." without giving any but the most mysterious and nebulous of reasons for their absence. They also tend to be the kind of people who don't do much advance planning; the request to take the 9 and 10 am lectures for next week is often delivered late in the day on a Friday.

The TMI.

This is the person (and I find these days it's more commonly students than other profs) who feels the need to share EVERYTHING with you. The details of the symptoms of the stomach bug they had last week. What their dog found out in the woods and then proceeded to roll in. What kind of medical procedures - in great detail - they're going to have to have. How her husband "puked his guts out" when he was in the room while she was giving birth.

There's no good way - other than avoidance or sharply changing the subject - of dealing with these folks; they are simply immune to the fact that other people are grossed out, horrified, or bored by their long-winded stories.