I lost my wireless earbuds, having last handled them on Christmas Eve. 

I had long lusted after wireless earbuds (sports/over-the-ear) that I could jog or hike with but the price was way too high given how reasonably satisfied I’d been for years with the ‘wired’ ones. . . which I consider a miracle. Oh, yes, I’ve been on this long journey from the Walkman (1979) onwards―and it’s been amazing. So, I’ve learned to manage the wire pretty well even while running trails or whatever. But I hadn’t priced the wireless ones in years and when I found out recently that I could get some nice ones for only $39, I was shocked. The over-the-ear sports kind―that price had come way down! I went for it, and they work great. I’ll never go back to being a miserable little penny-pinching freak with loser ‘wired’ earbuds.

But, I lost them already, after just about a month. 

I knew I had them Christmas Eve because I used them while working out at Planet Fitness that morning and believed they most likely got lost when I was juggling a bunch of stuff from my car to house when I got back mid-morning.  Bringing stuff back and forth is always a shitshow with me for some reason.  And I knew I’d temporarily set some stuff down on the street during the shuffle.   I checked the car, the street, traced my paths, etc. and turned my place inside out over the course of Christmas and the day after.  Nothing.  So, I finally called Planet Fitness:

ME:        “Yeah, hello, I wonder if you have a Lost & Found? . . . and whether you could check to see if a case of wireless earbuds turned up?  (asked for description) . . . they’re in a small black case, the shape of an egg and actually the size of a very large egg.  If anything, they were left the morning of the 24^th . . . Christmas Eve morning.  The brand name I think is JLab or something. . .”

HER:      “Hmmm. . . (rustle of paper) . . .there’s nothing in the log about it, so, . . No.”

ME:        “Oh, ok, but I was just wondering if you could check anyways?. . . a small black. . .”

HER:      “Yeah, No, there’s nothing in the log about it.”

I could feel my blood pressure checking in for the ride.  Nothing to get worried about yet Sir, just want to be standing by in case we have to go hot.

ME:         “Yes, ok, but do you have access to look to actually see if they’re there?  I just want to know if they might be in the place where you keep the stuff . . . I know about the log, the only question I have is if you have access to look?”

Some of my thoughts began to yell at me and I had to put them in a time-out.

HER:      “Look, I’ve answered your question, there’s nothing written, there’s nothing in the log about it.”

My blood pressure began to yell “fix bayonets!” all up and down the line. I wondered:

 a.)  if there were nuclear access code procedures involved which prevented her from opening the Lost & Found vault―which might contain, at best, a dented pair of reading glasses, a stale pack of gum, a terrycloth sweat-rag, and possibly an earbud case or,

 b.) did she simply not want to walk over and look in that fucking drawer or box or whatever? 

ME:  “Look, I understand there is nothing written about it, but, there’s a place where you keep the Lost & Found stuff, right?  Can you just look and see, that’s all I’m saying!” . . .

And alas, at that moment, the little brass gears that engage my mental capacity to tolerate this kind of stuff began to slip, being so worn from heavy use over the years.  And that slippage caused me to finish with:

ME:  “And please don’t tell me about the log again!” 

HER:  (curtly) “Sir, I’ve answered your question, it is not in the log, and your attitude is disrespectful.  I’m hanging up now.”

And she hung up.

Oh.  Well. 

I had the Planet Fitness business card which had the email address of the manager and so later that night I emailed the manager, explaining what had happened. My email had no vitriol, however.  My energy had dissipated, I wasn’t convinced the case was going to turn up there anyway, and I simply asked the manager if they did indeed have a Lost & Found and could she just take a peek.

Happily, the manager emailed back the next day, (today), and said indeed the earbuds case was there and they’d hold them for me!

Wow.

I just now picked them up.   Awesome! A big Thank You to whoever turned them in!

When I got there, I could tell instantly that the woman at the desk was the same woman I’d talked to on the phone a couple days before―by both her voice and demeanor.  As soon as I said my name, she knew what I was there for and asked her co-worker to have me sign for them in the logbook and then she walked off.

The co-worker flipped open the famous logbook, and I had to initial a block saying I’d received the item back. 

And the place where I had to initial/sign was right next to where I could see that a full, accurate, and contemporaneous entry of my earbud case being found had been made on the morning of Christmas Eve, at a time shortly after I left the gym.

Dr. Deborah Birx’s email revelations of today show that, at worst, she was criminally timid in representing the mandates of her profession or, at best, is running with a loyalty ethos that prioritizes loyalty to the person above loyalty to the mission. Neither scenario covers her in glory, but I suspect she was caught up in trying to be loyal to the person, although she might reframe it as her being loyal to ‘the position’ of the office of the President. Loyalty in the workplace is a siren song; there is an alluring pride both in having loyal employees and, in some ways more so, in being seen as loyal to your own boss. (Or to the mission―we’ll get there).

Birx didn’t agree with the Trump Team’s medical plan to push ‘herd immunity’ as the way forward through the Pandemic and so sought a way to not participate in a Trump-endorsed medical conference wherein a focus would be the advocacy of herd-immunity strategies that she believed were scientifically unsound and very dangerous to the U.S. population. She was at the time, notably, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator and was of course presumed to attend. But her decision to evade the conference and give ‘cover’ to the White House to account for her absence speaks to something that may seem surprising: she thought she was expressing loyalty to the President by not frustrating his intentions, and, worse, she didn’t then perceive the dishonor in that expression of loyalty. And that dynamic, that specific blind-spot of feeling, is ‘workplace cultural’ and is where ships crash into rocks.

Birx’s actions should have been informed by her Hippocratic Oath as a Doctor, her Oath of Office as an Army Colonel, and whatever further declarations of duty attended her ascension to the position of White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator. The Hippocratic Oath states in part: “I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine” and the Oath of Office for an Army Officer states in part: “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic“. I doubt any induction to her Coronavirus Response Coordinator position deviated materially from these basic premises. Nowhere would it say that ensuring the psychological comfort of the boss is the priority—regardless of the mission or circumstances.

I believe Birx’s actions were informed by something other than her oaths: the nebulous but strong and prevalent workplace culture of ‘supporting the Boss’ or ‘supporting the Commander’.

I’ve dealt with this for decades in the military, and from early on, I’ve always factored in loyalty towards the mission versus loyalty to the Commander specifically. (I acknowledge that in theory they are supposed to be aligned.) As the stakes increase, I find myself factoring in the mission even more. This is dangerous stuff in the Army Officer world and has sometimes inured tangibly to my detriment; I’ve been hurt by this and feel sufficient standing to opine. Perhaps my tack is nebulous as well, but it doesn’t violate any oaths and no mission has suffered by my snuggling up to the justification of ‘being loyal to the Boss’. Though I’ve certainly had some allies along the way, I found that my peers were generally uncomfortable with the subject of supporting the mission versus the Commander and default to the prevailing culture of wanting to show that they’re supporting the Commander.

Proof of Birx’s entanglement in this culture is her candid admission to her peers about what she was doing and why. If she felt any shame or dishonor, that email being dissected in the news today would never have happened. Perhaps she was aware also that she’d even engender some respect from her peers over her martyrdom towards engineering a way to not counter her boss. And now look how far we’ve strayed from the mission of advocating science in service to saving lives during a national emergency.

Birx no doubt thinks she was ‘respecting and protecting the position of the President of the United States. And I really mean ‘no doubt’―I’ve seen this too many times and every time someone is called on this they talk about respecting the position “even if I don’t like the person”. Some even expect, as a result of this declaration, to be respected for their magnanimity in this regard! Certainly, Birx didn’t like Trump (how could any real scientist?) and was aware of his flaws as a human, let alone a leader. But this is missing the point; the mission of coordinating the Coronavirus response in the United States should trump Trump’s personality traits -be they good or bad- and following that mission’s North Star would have had her in that conference advocating scientifically and ethically sound courses of action while refuting scientifically and ethically unsound courses of action.

The ‘respecting the position’ argument deflates further when one thinks about the workplace environment with granularity. It is not the position, but the person, that one encounters at meetings, and in the halls, and it is the person one communicates with―it is not the position. For Birx, it would be Trump saying nice things about her or not, inviting her to meetings or not, enhancing her career or not. It would not be the abstract concept of a position that does these things for her or to her.

A final argument that some give in these situations is that they must behave so in order to remain on scene (versus resigning in protest) to prevent things from getting even worse. This color of hubris tries to believe that their special brand of expertise is more valuable than sending a message, with either candid argument or resignation, that the mission is at risk. Besides being ultimately a disservice to the boss, and by extension the mission, this argument smacks of cowardice. And we’ll never know how things could have turned out better had everyone involved had the spine to recalibrate their loyalty off of flawed humans and towards the actual job mission.

What’s the fix? We could start by devaluing the notion of automatic loyalty to people of position. And we could consider in advance exactly where we would willingly subordinate our own need to be seen as loyal to the boss in order to prioritize the larger needs of mission accomplishment. It’s a tough sell, I know ―everybody wants to be seen as a good little boy or girl.

How will you know when you are at that crossroads? You’ll know. And then remember that you have a choice that might be different than the one you’ve been trained to feel.

I can’t believe I got through this without mentioning bleach.

Whoops.