Self-Centered

An interesting incident as narrated by Brijesh.

The people who come to US from India with this sense of self made pride about the jobs soon realize the hollowness of their pride once they are here. This happened almost 4 years back. One of the Professors from IIT came to my school for sabbatical in the Department of Electrical Engineering. I took him to the Social Security office to get his SSN card after a week he arrived in my school. There was a big queue in the SSN office. I told him to stand at the end of the queue. Instead he went to the security officer and told, “I am a Professor in this school. I am here to get my SSN”. The security officer told him to go and stand in the queue. He again told them about his credentials. The security officer replied, “ If you have come to apply for the SSN you have to stand in the queue. We don’t have a separate line for Professors”. He stood in the queue for more than 1 hour, did all the formalities and came out. On his way back he as so upset that he had to stay in the queue.

This reminded me of a similar incident in my school. Socorro is a very small town with not many hospitals around. One of the professors went to the student health center and demanded service since he is a “Professor” in the school. The doctor had to politely brush him off by saying that the health center is only for students. The professor was seriously offended by this act of the doctor.