Return of the Clique

In 1963 my parents moved our family from what most would consider a more rural area of New York (although we were really just outside of New York City) to a more suburban neighborhood in New Jersey. My father had been commuting more than 50 miles each way for his job and it was time to go closer. 

I’ve never been the person to have lots and lots of friends around. At heart, I’m probably more the solitary type and normally am comfortable being close to just two or three people. But I was happy to make a friend on the new block right away. Unfortunately, she wasn’t in my class in the public schools so I was on my own the first day. And, surprisingly, when I went to gym class—yes, gym class, who would have thought it, which was shared with another class, I instantly clicked with a girl there. So, there was hope.

My parents were very big on certain ideas, some of which I think have disappeared in the last 50 or so years. One was that when you went to school you sat, you learned, you paid attention, you respected your teachers. The other concept was that you did the same in religious school—which I attended 3 times a week for a total of about 5 hours. I was stunned when I walked into the first class there and the girl from gym class was sitting there. To this day—and after more than 50 years of friendship with her—I am grateful. Without her sharing the class, life would have been hell. Why? Because of THE CLIQUE.   

     

It turns out that my particular grade in school had a clique in it. How did that happen? A lot of the parents had moved from a town about 12 miles away that had fallen out of favor. So years before, they all moved to my new town—and almost everyone lived in the same neighborhood, so their children could grow up together. In fact, it seemed like they did just about everything together. And, I think there were people who wanted to be part of the group, so they lived on the edges of that neighborhood. While most of these families had at least two children, apparently the bulk of the next generation turned up in my class.

My new friend’s parents were actually part of the group at one point, but when they moved they opted to live on the other side of town and not be part of that. Their beliefs on child rearing and what was important were much more in alignment with what my parents thought. As my friend has said, “The day she arrived I finally had someone to talk to.”

But this is just background. The clique continued through high school, although other kids worked really hard to join it so there was some ebb and flow in it. The bigger problem was that they really didn’t seem open to even interacting with people outside their group, and it was very insular. And yes, I sound insulted that I wasn’t part of the group, but when you have to work with someone who really doesn’t want to interact with you, it’s annoying.

Ultimately, we all graduated and they had to go their separate ways. But at the reunion who did they stay with—the old crowd. And by the way, my sister was 4 years behind me. Even her class had heard of this group in the school. It lived well beyond its “Sell by…” date.

 Fast Forward 40+ Years…

Aren’t cliques so high school? Apparently not. I was working as the only staff editor for a medical education agency. Everything was supposed to come across my desk, and the higher ups were very happy with my work. Granted, there were some days when they thought I could read 90 pages in an hour—I refused to even try—but for the most part everything was going very well and I was happy to have regular work. But then there was a palace coup and one manager leapfrogged another to take charge of my group. He put someone else in charge of the day-to-day running of things.

I knew there would be trouble the first time she came in for a meeting. Spoke to everyone, except me. Bad management technique. It then became apparent that she didn’t like editors who worked on staff. How did I know? I have really good hearing and she said so to someone else. And somehow work didn’t arrive when promised so it was sent out to be completed overnight. The writing was on the wall, and I sat back to watch. I’ve been there, seen that. High school was back.

A couple of people left and were replaced—by people with no experience. An editorial assistant was hired, without my input, and not even introduced when she started. But you could see that she was part of the “in” crowd. Then I had a couple of stupid comments made to me based on age and speed. Sorry, but speed is not really a desired part of the editorial world—usually, spelling is a big thing. Plus, they couldn’t figure out how I could fix somethings by keeping notes on what I did. Obviously, I should just remember everything—that’s what they did and it worked fine except when it didn’t. In one week I had at least half a dozen projects that I had to fix after they “corrected” things. Oh, and they referred to me as “she” in really loud terms but never by name. It was juvenile.

Came the day when I was called in and told things “just hadn’t worked out.” (Patently untrue.) The lead manager, the one who committed the palace coup, couldn’t look me in the eye because he knew what was happening was just wrong. But the rest of management was young, and they liked to deal only with the young pretty girls—almost all of the staff. I took the severance, which was quite generous, and left. The only issue was proving to the unemployment office that I was let go without cause; I won that too.

After I left I kept an ear to the ground and found out what happened. Seems that cute editorial assistant who was in the work clique left a month after I did, so they had no one. Work still had to be sent out and some of it just came back wrong (and no, I don’t think I’m perfect but at least I wrote the style sheets). Some of those young things had helped “grow” the firm. Within 6 months it was shrinking again. They had to give up the big fancy office and all those clique-y types were demoted to the same or lesser positions that they had previously. I heard that one of the blessed ones made a huge error, but her mother was a friend of the owner so she was just demoted—and kept her nice office. The company has since moved to much smaller quarters and a number of people have left. But the heart of the clique is still running things—and from what I hear, not well.

The Moral of the Story

 High school should stay in high school--and really, cliques should stay in grammar school. Once you graduate it’s time to grow up. If you can’t make friends outside of the group you grew up in, you have bigger problems. Life is more than a clique. And working in the real world means you need to sometimes step out of your comfort zone. Some of the people outside of the clique really do have value—and maybe experiences you can learn from. Try it.