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Flagpole Friends Need Us
PATRICK DEAN AND WILLIAM ORTEN CARLTON HELPED CREATE FLAGPOLE
By Pete McCommons pete@flagpole.com
EEDE^ hey, bon
Horrible Bosses
ADVICE FOR ATHENS’ FED-UP EMPLOYEES
By Bonita Applebum advice@flagpole.com
Two people who have done as much as any
body to shape and define Flagpole need our
help. Friends have set up fundraisers for
Patrick Dean and for Ort Carlton.
Patrick
Eleanor Davis, who, along with Melissa
McBride, is organizing Patrick’s gofundme.
com campaign, explains Patrick’s situation
as follows:
“Three years ago our friend Patrick Dean
was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal, neuro-
degenerative disease. For almost two years
he’s needed 24-hour care and now is receiv
ing additional inpatient hospice care. He
and his family are having to pay for these
expenses out of their own savings.
“Patrick is the dad of two young chil
dren (the amazing Eloise and Julian) and
husband of total badass Erin Josey. He’s a
son, a brother and a friend to all. As co-or
ganizer of the FLUKE mini-comics festival,
he’s always been a champion of everyone in
the small-press community, and he’s a truly
extraordinary cartoonist. Although he’s
now completely immobilized and unable to
speak, Patrick still stubbornly manages to
make his incomparable—hilarious, sweet,
sad, scary, goofy, profound—art, now
through the use of eye-gaze technology.
“The only way Patrick can get the com
plex care he now needs is through contin
uous skilled nursing care, which is very
costly and not covered by his insurance. His
family is paying for this enormous expense
with the savings they were counting on for
their parents’ elder care and for Eloise and
Julian’s futures. Let’s help Patrick get the
palliative hospice care he needs without
having to be afraid it will deny his family
the future he wants for them.”
I can only add that for years, Patrick’s
zany, otherworldly comics welcomed read
ers into Flagpole each week from their
perch on p.3, where he constructed an
alternate Athens peopled by monsters
with soul. Through Patrick’s genius, wit
and skill, Flagpole readers had an exclusive
entree into a shadow town that gave depth
and meaning to the everyday Athens they
inhabited. Helping Patrick and his family
now is a great opportunity for payback—
thanking him for enriching our lives and
enhancing the mythos of our Athens. It’s
easy: Just go to gofundme.
com, click on “search” in
the upper lefthand corner,
type in Patrick Dean, and
the rest is simple.
Ort
Lesley Ganschow is
organizing the fundraiser
for Ort, aka William Orten
Carlton, and here’s her
message:
“Dearfolk: Ort has
been reluctant to let us
know, but he is in a very
difficult spot, and we know
Athens will be eager to
show him how much his
kindness, stories, yams
and astonishing memory
of anecdotes and history
have meant to generations
of Athenians. For many
of us, a beer with Ort was
bragging rights. Even
those who watched from
afar feel like he is a link to
the intangible character
that makes Athens far
more than a town. We
recently found out that
he is not eligible for Social Security. He has
always kept busy and helpful to many and
has been an astonishingly gifted writer.
But it has all fallen under the category of
[nontraditional] income. He also spent
most of his life caring for his mother, who
left him a modest inheritance which is now
exhausted. Your contribution will help us
get him through this current rough patch.
He will be able to pay his most basic bills
and some property tax and figure out the
next step.”
Limited space allows me to add only
that our friend Ort has led a sort of Walt
Whitman-like life, roaming his hometown
of Athens in bearded eccentricity since high
school, deeply delving into every aspect of
our communal life—embracing its music,
its food and its beer, almost single-hand
edly waking Athens up to the wonders
of craft beer. He wrote for the old Athens
Observer, and he wrote for Flagpole from
the beginning, giving this publication a
plethora of personality as a guidebook to
alternative Athens. Go to gofundme.com,
and type in William Carlton.
Thanks, everybody! ©
Patrick Dean drew this portrait of his family when he still could.
Hi Bonita,
My boss has been with us for about a year
and is the youngest person on our staff. He’s
the director of our department and has never
worked in our field before. It seems that maybe
he was hired more to enact the directives of the
governing body above him rather than to pro
vide us staff with any [leadership] or direction
because, in general, it seems like he has no idea
what he’s doing. He is also very messy. If there
is an issue or problem with one staff member,
he will call an [all-staff] meeting and address
the issue as though it applies to all of us, creat
ing so much anxiety and stress. He has no idea
how to work the computer
programs that we
have to use and
attempts to give us
tutorials, which
will just
have us
company chose poorly with this hire and
it’s reflected in this guy’s performance and
management style. Calling the entire staff
into a meeting over a specific incident with
a single worker is a super amateur move
and betrays any professional assurances
you were given by higher-ups when he was
hired. Maybe he doesn’t have the guts or
the skill to have a one-on-one interaction
with a wayward worker, but he shouldn’t
make the entire staff suffer a pointless
meeting over that. And the technology
training thing is just embarrassing. Why
didn’t your job just get an IT technician or
someone who knows what they’re doing to
train you? (Probably because
they’d have to pay
that person,
all gig
gling under
our breath.
I don’t respect
this guy, and I am
equally baffled by the
people who hired him. How can I
navigate the situation without making things
harder for myself? I don’t like the stress that
he brings to our department, and I’m starting
to want to simply not attend the overly long
and useless meetings that he calls regularly.
Any advice you could give would be appreci
ated, but please don’t tell me to find a new job.
This is the best job I can find in my field which
pays me [a salary] that I can live on and is also
eligible for student loan forgiveness.
Thank you!
Worker Bee Who’s Dealing With A Boss Baby
Hey there, Worker Bee,
If quitting isn’t an option, then you’re
gonna have to become a pro chef when it
comes to making lemons into lemonade.
Since this guy is your boss—and obviously
not a very good or effective one—it’s
important to stay on his good side. In gen
eral, you don’t want him to have any idea
that you don’t respect him and think he’s
awful at his job. Be polite and professional
and courteous, always. That doesn’t mean
that you need to pretend to be friendly to
the point of talking about your home life or
socializing outside of work, but he should
always be none the wiser to your disdain—
which is perfectly justified, by the way. Your
so they
just make
an unqualified
manager try
to do it instead.) I
think there may be big
ger management problems
at your job than just a too-green supervisor
trying to do too much.
The best thing you can do is to look like
an excellent employee while you insulate
yourself from this person as much as pos
sible. If these meetings are optional, then
I recommend you stop going, but be sure
to have some vital work task to explain
your absence. Focus on your own role at
work and doing the job you were hired for,
and do as great of a job as you can under
such leadership. Be discreet about taking
comfort with your coworkers via commis
erating about the hand y’all were dealt, and
certainly don’t do that on company email
accounts or cell phones.
And I know you said not to tell you to
quit, but I want to gently remind you that
there are tons of different state and govern
ment workplaces that offer competitive sal
aries and student loan forgiveness. There’s
no way that your workplace is the only one.
Slap on a smile and protect your neck, but
you’d be silly not to keep your eyes open for
better opportunities. ©
Need advice? Email advice@flagpole.com or
use our anonymous online form at flagpole.com/
get-advice.
MAY 5, 2021 | FLAGPOLE.COM 13