Today’s Adventure: Sucking Up

If there’s one thing the Moldovans are good at, it’s appealing to their superiors or, as Americans put it, brown-nosing. I think that Americans have been infused with this really strong sense that even your boss at work (who is your BOSS and therefore is likely to be more experienced, more qualified, and more educated than you) is really your equal, and that you should be treated as an equal. Think about it. This whole idea of sucking up to the boss really went out with the 70’s and now managers go to entire week-long seminars about how they can effectively manage us without us feeling “managed,” but rather, feeling like they really CARE about us. Let’s contrast this with the Moldovans. The spend almost a century doing things the Soviet way and (stop me if this is my American Cold War propaganda programming – it MAY be!) it seems to me that this includes acknowledging a level of corruption on an individual level. This means that if the boss’s cousin shows up and wants a job, he sure as hell is going to get one, and a good one at that, even if he’s an incompetent nit-wit. This kind of thing was (and MAYBE still is – no comment…) just the way things go and whereas an American would see this as an affront to humanity, soviet ruled countries would probably see it as good luck for the cousin, just bad luck for themselves. Now, this being said, I in no way think there is any corruption going on in my school, or anywhere in my village that I have observed. But the vestiges of these attitudes can still be seen in how the Moldovan choose to honor their professional superiors for little things like birthdays. It was my teaching partners birthday a few months ago and she brought her own little bag of food to have a little masa (party) in the library after school. She invited everyone but only 4 or 5 of u showed up, presumably the rest being busy. She just had a couple dishes and we hung out for an hour or so and then went home. The director’s birthday was last week and everyone went APESHIT. Everyone was warned a week in advance that they must come to the masa and that they should contribute 50 lei to a present for her (no one else gets anything on their birthdays, in fact they are expected to pay by themselves for anything they share for the occasion). All the teachers spent all day preparing food and running all over the school (while the kids are standing in the hallways wondering what all the commotion is about) and at 2 o’clock when we say down it was the gigantic table to gorgeous food and wine that the director hadn’t needed to lift a finger to prepare. We then all had to stay for at least 3 hours and were also forced by some of the more energetic young teachers (read: the ones that want to be director in a few years) to sing Moldovan birthday songs and keep toasting by reciting poetry about how honest and beautiful the director is. (Side Note: Moldovans love reciting poetry and they do it at any opportunity. Being surrounded by teachers who make the kids repeat it all day, this masa, of course, had more poetry repetition than a typical birthday celebration). Anyhoo, I just thought it was interesting. My poor little partner busted her ass to have a little party and some recognition on her birthday from just a handful of people and the director gets to gallivant around like a queen and all the teachers make the celebration for her, not to mention buy her a very expensive crystal candy dish as a present. But that’s just my American-All-Men-Are-Created-Equal nerve talking. Not that I’m complaining, but know what I got on my birthday? I card. Noapte buna!