Narcissism and Nepotism Are More Insidious Than Crime and Poverty: The Count Draculas Among Us
I do not own the copyright/license to any of the visual content below. I use them as part of an educational demonstration, and not for the sole purpose of personal gain.
Turn on the nightly local news for any midsize American city, and the crime rates are dismal. However, as a degreed, constantly underemployed perpetual, part-time professor, I know that crime and poverty are not the only things ruining cities. There are Count Draculas among us in every facet of our work lives, and they are draining the life out of our cities, metaphorically. Practically, a city’s downfall comes from lack of vision at all leadership/industry positions.
Okay, here’s a secret: I have a second Bachelor’s in psychology. And as an junior psychologist, I am OBSESSED with industrial-organizational psychology and personality disorders. I am not afraid to look at the gigantic picture and see patterns and trends in whole areas. As a perpetual part-time professor, I have long ceased to be angry about my employment situation. Don’t call me Van Helsing, but as an amateur I-O psychologist, I see an area that is inundated with vampirism. I live in ArkaMemphiSsippi, and it is burdened with non-progressive attitudes that no one seems to recognize or understand. What does non — progressive mean? Metaphorically, it is the trance-inducing dust or the mist that announces the arrival of Count Dracula before he drains your blood. Practically, at least in the ArkaMephiSsippi area, it means simply being behind the times and the trends, whatever they are. Also…you know what? I’m having too much fun with the Dracula metaphors. Let me get to the issue at hand!
I have a friend who works with a janitorial service. It is a gig that he landed as a way to help pay for his college education. And honestly, I don’t blame him for not wanting a gazillion dollars in student loans. Recently, there was a controversy at his job. The boss came down hard: pointing out people’s flaws, yelling about any dust bunnies being left behind, or someone finishing a job a few minutes earlier than the allotted time and going home. Well, he recently hired someone who is a bit more outspoken than my friend, competent, and most of all, hard working. See, the problem was, according to my friend, that this guy was too hardworking and managed to finish assignments sometimes 90 minutes ahead of schedule.
Well, at a company meeting, the boss really blasted this guy. My friend said that the guy, who is normally outgoing and talkative, did not say anything. When the boss finished belittling this guy, my friend says that this guy simply read out the value of the contract that his boss had been rewarded. According to the contract, there was enough in the budget to pay eight workers $18/hour. Yet, they were only receiving $10.50/hour at the most. The boss became irate — bumbling through words like, “insurance” and “liability on vehicles,” and “equipment.” After bumbling through these things, he began to yell at the employee. The employee, believing that the boss was pocketing the additional $7.50/hour, stomped out of the business, leaving the job behind.
My friend’s story is so familiar to me, but I listened in complete silence. We all live in the Memphis metro area: Memphis and the surrounding suburbs that span from West Memphis, Arkansas to Hernando, Mississippi. We all have wildly varying degrees and occupations. In our circle alone are: psychologist, judge, high school French teacher, electrical engineer, geological engineer, physical therapy assistant, industrial engineer, special education teacher, chemist, business owner, photographer, and carpenter. When any of my friends calls me with a complaint about a job, I can just about put my finger on this dysfunction — regardless of the occupation.
My stay here in this area, with the dismal nightly news reports of crime and fire — have convinced me that crime and poverty do not always make a place non-progressive. The people that we see on television normally do not make employment decisions. The people on the six o’clock news normally are not in the position to harass employees through mobbing and cliquing (should management become desperate enough to hire someone they do not know). The people on the six o’clock news are not CEOs, college presidents, department chairs, supervisors, and employers who desire the title and the bucks, but will not absorb the blame if anything goes wrong. If ArkaMemphiSsippi (my pet name for this area) is non-progressive, look no further than cliquish attitudes, sycophantic behavior, dysfunctional workplaces, narcissism/nepotism, and lack of mature, responsible leadership. From the hospitals to the colleges to the engineering sectors, this seems to be the case. Here are some key things that I have seen that make this area as non-progressive as winter time molasses.
- You gotta know somebody in order to obtain stable employment. This is the first sign of workplace dysfunction. ArkaMemphiSsippi has a current population well over 1 million people. Yet, whenever an application is sent out, it is best to have someone inside that institution/factory/school/hospital. Normally, “a person for a person” is a surefire sign of narcissism. This is narcissism via nepotism and it is personally legal. When narcissists are in power, their main goal is to maintain power and the privileges that come along with it, without being exposed for their low-performance (laziness) and incompetence. So, they will bring on other narcissists who are just as lazy and incompetent or friends who won’t question their judgment. Think of nepotism as a vampire biting you. Once Count Dracula “turns” you, you are forever loyal to him. And you will behave in the way that he wants you to, even if you KNOW that it out of character for you, forbidden by your Sunday school book, and hurtful to other people. But you need that paycheck, right? Integrity is nice, but it does not pay the bills, we tell ourselves.
Now, there is nothing wrong with hiring friends, but in a non-progressive area, those friends must be less smart than or less qualified than their hiring buddy. The narcissist uses nepotism in order to screen for loyalty. Loyalty, not competence, is rewarded heavily. On the other hand, actual competence is penalized as the narcissistic ego is fragile and hard work makes the narcissist look bad for his/her laziness.
2. Job descriptions and functions are poorly delineated, and power can rest in the hands of one person. Recently, three women were arrested in Coahoma County, Mississippi. Two worked at Coahoma Community College and one worked at the tourism board. In the case of the woman who worked at the tourism board, leadership roles were often muddied and poorly-defined. Conflicts of interest were not considered and she was left with all of the money and the power. This is often the case in non-progressive, dysfunctional places. No matter how well put-together a job description may be, everyone seems to know who is really in charge. Woe unto you if the “boss” has a personal vendetta against you. Everyone begins to pick and mob in order to gain brownie points with the boss.
Here’s a nightmarish, vampire experience that I had that helps make my point: I once worked at an HBCU in which there is no faculty senate. When I read the catalog, almost every major challenge ended with the phrase: “the final decision rests with the president.” From Day One of my employment, the president let it be known that he hated me. Since I never spoke a cross word to the man, I didn’t care that he hated me and didn’t try to figure out why. His hatred didn’t stop me from teaching and researching — which is what I was hired to do. But the inhumanity of the sustained harassment I received from the hands of colleagues who were trying to score brownie points was unbelievable. When I became pregnant, I asked for heat that winter. The physical plant, because they feared the president more than they feared God, would not turn it on. In addition, I was forced to teach an extra class with no release time and no extra compensation while pregnant. I taught in a freezing cold room that shriveled a pregnant woman’s fingers. When I took classes to my office, where I’d brought a small, personal heater from home, I was threatened with a reprimand. In the end, I contracted a nasty case of bronchitis (which I’d never had before) and gave birth to my daughter almost a month early due to the coughing. I can say, that to this day, my lungs are still damaged from the cruel treatment that I received at Rust College. Even after the cruel treatment, I gave birth on a Sunday and taught classes from my hospital bed via online platforms Monday afternoon. I was also not excused from graduation. With my breasts full of milk and hurting, I sat through it. Rust College was a lesson in non-progressiveness that I hope others do not have to learn the hard way. Power rests with the president, his wife, and his friend. Period. Anyone who is not a sycophant of those people will suffer as I did — sometimes with detrimental consequences.
3. Morale is low.
As I stated earlier, there is nothing wrong with hiring friends if those friends are qualified. It is so often the case in non-progressive areas that friends are given jobs that they are in no way, shape, form, or fashion qualified for! Meanwhile, to the person who just comes to work, performs, and comes up with unique ideas to solve problems will be overlooked and harassed. In non-progressive area, hard work is unwelcome and disregarded. It will never be your job to do your job. It is your job not to make the boss look bad. Others will also undermine the productive employee in order to hang on to their own pay checks. Being overlooked and undermined at work, church, and school can often lead to low morale throughout a company/institution/city in large numbers. Individually, it can lead to depression. You wonder (as I did), “why waste time and resources going to college if all I have to do is know somebody?”
4. Leadership hogs glory and shoulders no blame. I have talked to many, many people who have had their ideas stolen by their bosses. I have talked to many, many people who have had brilliant ideas for solving problems or improving services, but the boss would not act on them because the ideas did not originate with him/her or a pet employee. Again, this causes company/institution morale to plummet and individual cases of depression. Other things adding to this type of dysfunction are lack of communication/poor communication and those in position of leadership who hog the glory and money but will shoulder none of the blame. When there is a failure, it is ALWAYS somebody else’s fault, but never their lack of leadership. Believe it or not, many people still have pride in the work that they do. They do not want to fail and are vested in their companies/institutions/organizations succeeding. However, if the boss is a narcissist who practices nepotism, failure is neither a threat nor an embarrassment. Their need to shine is greater and stronger than the longevity and legacy of the companies/institutions/organizations that they head. Failure means that they can blame many people and things: “the incompetent “help” around me (though they orchestrated the team through nepotism),” “crashing markets,” “the nation’s president,” “the state capitol and how the capitol is always cutting funding,” “people just do not respect the institution/organization/even God the way they used to do,” “donations are down,” “that person who works under me who I hate because he/she works to undermine me”…etc. Blaming others allows the boss to be resistant to change, continue to extract goods and services from whatever he/she heads, and keep the culture dysfunctional.
5. There is a high turnover rate and an accompanying brain drain of the area.
Inevitably, this kind of dysfunction leads to high turnover rates for individual companies/organizations/institutions and a brain-drain for a city/region. The bottom line is this: highly educated people have options. They do not have to endure obvious nepotism, harassment, mobbing and everyday microaggressions from sycophantic, spineless colleagues whose only concern seem to be managing the boss’ feelings for a paycheck. At the least, they can find another job with less stress: at the most, highly-educated, skilled employees can just move to more progressive areas. This is why places like ArkaMemphiSsippi experience prolonged brain drains. At first, narcissists who practice nepotism may feel secure and even victorious when highly-competent people leave a company or an area. In the end, when even the narcissist loses his/her job due to lack of demand/lack of qualified employees/poor reputation (that is the result of the incompetent team that narcissist compiled in the first place), he/she wonders why.
And with the organization/institution/company crumbling around him/her, the narcissists who make the decisions that ruin legacies, close company and school doors, and even destroy churches and other service organizations still see no need to change. For that reason, narcissists in positions of leadership who practice nepotism in policy creation, key decision-making, and employment ruin companies/organizations/institutions and cities in a much more insidious fashion than crime and poverty. There can be policy decisions and employment initiatives to help remedy crime and poverty, but if a narcissist is in charge of those decisions and initiatives, cycles continue. One narcissist has the potential to ruin 10,000 lives. These people are real-life Count Draculas who terrorize centuries-old service institutions and drain whole cities of their very life-blood, and no one is even looking at them with a critical eye, let-alone exorcising them with a silver cross! Are we placing the blame for America’s crumbling cities on criminals and poor people, when we really should be looking at the narcissists in decision-making positions?
This is not from my classes, but directly from my personal experience and my personal diary.
