You're a high-ranking MIT administrator.  You suddenly get handed a
new job.  You've got a salary.  You've got a desk to sit behind.
You've got a new office; it's a little smaller, and in a strangely
inconvenient location, but at least it's new.  You've got a new title;
it suggests that you do something vague yet important.  But you used
to have thirty employees... and now you've got none.

Don't try to fool yourself: this is the way the Institute fires you.

Tech Talk will call it an "exciting new post."  Administrators will
say that you've done "a great job."  Administrators will say what a
"great job" you'll do.  

Left unstated is what actual work you'll do now that you have no
employees.  Now that you have no resources.  Now that you have no
responsibilities.  Now that you have no authority.  Now that your
former employees can be overheard in public saying "well, she can call
it a promotion if she wants, but (pppppphhpbbblllthpthpthpllppppthp)."

Oh, but you've got a new title.  Nobody's ever had this title before.
They made it up just for you.  It's more graceful than admitting that
hiring you was a big mistake to begin with.  It's more graceful than
saying "the trail of political carnage you've carved will take years
to repair."

And you're a clever little bureaucrat.  So you hope that maybe you can
leverage a new title into into a little money, a little space, a
couple of employees, until voila!  Your very own Department of
Uselessness, lined up in a row alongside all the others.  You and
yours can take your place next to hall-of-famer Larry McGuire and his
MIT Card Office.

So join us for tonight's Girl Scout Benefit, at which we will raise a
toast to former MIT Campus Police Chief Anne Glavin.  We will wish her
well in her new position as the Institute's brand-spankin' new
"Director of Public Safety."  And we'll raise a congratulatory toast
to MIT Chancellor Larry Bacow, whose iminent transition to President
of Tufts has undoubtedly saved him from an embarassing "lateral move"
to the as-yet-unfilled MIT Minister of Truth and Student Happiness.

  ****************** GIRL  SCOUT  BENEFIT ******************
  ****************** 5:30pm  7AI Playroom ******************