I wrote a post a few days ago on Asshole Revenge Stories, which talked about the virtues and dangers of exacting revenge from assholes. One of the stories was about Sue Schurman and how --when she was a bus driver in Ann Arbor, Michigan -- she taught new bus drivers that a good driver never has an accident, they are all acts of skilled revenge against cars. Sue emphasized that such acts were rare, but it was the feeling that you could do it -- that perception of control -- that was most crucial to a bus driver's well-being. Since that post, Sue wrote me that she has heard from a number off readers who are especially interested in how she went from bus driver to college president. Her note is great and I repeat it here:
I have been hearing from some of
your readers that they really enjoyed the story of bus drivers saving up
accidents to use as intentional punishment. Several have asked for more
information about how I went from bus driver to president of the National Labor College. They can find a short bio on our
website www.nlc.edu.
One point that is not clear from
your story is that while I was union president I was also Director of Driver
Training. This happened because I had demonstrated a gift for training new
drivers. It may have had something to do with the fact that I had a graduate
degree in education but the immediate cause was my anger at some of the guys who
trained me. Mass transit was a male world in the early 1970s and the guys
weren’t too excited about women joining their ranks. It was mostly just plain
old sexism but there was also a pretty good reason for them to be concerned.
The Director of the Transit Authority had made it known that he was hiring women
because they were docile. It was, in fact, an attempt to bust the union.
The
joke turned out on him. A bunch of us gals (twenty-somethings straight out of
the civil rights, women’s and anti-war movements) who were anything but docile
got ourselves hired and became the union leadership. But the guys had a strategy
to keep us out. They intentionally directed us into clipping telephone poles on
right hand turns. I hit a pole my first day out. Two older women – the only
two women there before we got there – who had learned to drive the big buses
(technically they are called motor coaches) took me in hand and showed me how to
make a proper turn using the mirrors. I never had another preventable accident
and vowed to teach others myself so that they wouldn’t have this same
experience.
I got to be both union president and training director even though the boss wanted this to be a management position because my method of training worked. During my tenure as training director we cut the accident rate at least in half. Having the psychological safety valve was most likely part of it. But training really helps too.
I only knew Sue during a few years of this transition, in the early 1980's. We had a lot of fun writing our paper on studying emotionally hot topics (she worked with me on my dissertation on the process of organizational death and we talked to a lot upset people) and she was one of the smartest and most fun co-author's I've had. And she has a LOT of talents. When we were writing that paper she was also finishing-up her Ph.D and was the executive director of the local humane society. I remember her talking about how she wanted to write an article about the experience called "Teaching an Old Dog Pound New Tricks." I am not sure she ever did it, as doing things like running a college it time consuming, but it sure was a good title. I am glad that Sue has done so well, but I am not surprised because, as you can see, she is smart woman that doesn't put-up with any nonsense!
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