This Boss Sure Ain’t A (Crystal) Gem
I worked in a rather toxic library with terrible management. I had a coworker who was diagnosed with prosopagnosia (face blindness) during my employment. She wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t recognize anyone — she got to learn all our faces eventually — but she had an extremely difficult time learning the names or even recognizing our regular patrons.
Our boss was the exact opposite. After meeting someone one time, she knew everything about them: their families, where they worked, where they went to school, etc. It really was an amazing memory. But as a result, our boss couldn’t understand why [Coworker] struggled.
About once a month, our boss took my coworker around and introduced (or reintroduced) her to everyone who happened to be in the library at the time. It was during this that [Coworker] was going through appointments to get diagnosed with prosopagnosia, so I forget at which time exactly [Coworker] was formally diagnosed with the condition in relation to all these events.
During these tours, our boss would chat with our regulars. “It’s great to see you again! How is your statistics class?” “Hello, it’s been a while! How are your three kids? How are your two dogs?” “Wow! Look how much taller you’ve gotten over the past year!” Those kinds of things. All the while, my coworker just looked very bewildered as she tried to process a dozen names and faces and life stories all at once. Afterward, my boss would ask [Coworker] about people’s names, and she couldn’t do it. My boss expressed great disappointment in my coworker.
Boss: “So much of our job is community outreach and relationship building! How can you give good customer service if you don’t know anyone’s names?”
Coworker: “I’m polite to everyone and try to help them to the best of my ability.”
Boss: “You need to know our people! Come on, this one is easy. They’re here all the time. What’s his name?”
She pointed to a little toddler boy.
My coworker was just speechless and looked as if she was going to cry. She just shook her head and pointed out that there were THREE blond toddler boys running around our library at that moment and she couldn’t tell any of them apart. To be honest, I couldn’t tell them apart myself, and I’m there more often than [Coworker] and don’t have prosopagnosia.
My boss sent my coworker into the back where I found her crying five minutes later. She was terrified she was going to get fired, written up, or (most likely) docked in her upcoming employee review because she couldn’t tell faces apart and couldn’t recall the names of people she only meets once a month. I did my best to reassure her and pointed out that [Boss] has an exceptional people-based memory and that not everyone is like that. I could maybe only name a third of the patrons present on that day, after all.
Of course, this being [Boss], she didn’t let up. Now, it was a well-known fact that [Coworker] was a huge fan of “Steven Universe,” so my boss took [Coworker] aside one day — though not far enough since we all heard the conversation.
Boss: “Listen, [Coworker]. If you can tell apart all the characters in Steven Universe, you can tell apart the children who come into our library.”
Coworker: “It’s not the same! In Steven Universe, they’re all different colors, for one. And second, they all have really different designs. It’s like saying that just because I can tell a cat is not a dog, I should be able to tell one little blond boy apart from another little blond boy.”
Boss: “Think of it this way, [Coworker]. It’s not as if a Steven Universe character is going to walk through our doors. You’re much more likely to meet real people, and you need to put an effort into remembering their names. It’s like you care more about fictional characters than our real patrons.”
Coworker: “That’s not true at all! My brain just literally doesn’t remember them! I try and try and try, and as soon as they look away, my brain tosses out all information related to them.”
She was once again almost in tears.
Boss: “It’s a matter of priorities, [Coworker]. If you can remember Steven Universe, you can remember real people.”
I wound up leaving the library myself shortly after this due to the toxic nature of that boss, among many other things. I never did hear if [Coworker] pursued the issue with the Union or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission due to what likely qualified as disability discrimination, especially once she got her formal diagnosis. I did a bit of reading on my own about prosopagnosia — enough to know that our boss was being MASSIVELY unfair and unfactual, as the part of the human brain that processes 2D images (like “Steven Universe” would be) is completely different than the part of the brain that processes facial recognition.
