The Luv Doc: Let Bleeding Martyrs Bleed

Luv Doc, 

I work at a small, contract-based marketing company here in Austin. In total we have around 80 employees and in my department there are nine people. I like our manager and get along with my co-workers, except for one particular employee we call Mrs. Martyr. She is always the first one at work in the morning, and the last one to leave at night. She is famous for her “working lunches” that she eats at her desk instead of the break room. Any extra job, seminar, or workshop that happens, she is the first to volunteer. You would think, “Great! She’s leading by example,” except that she complains constantly that she is too busy to take on any additional work because she is really stressed out, overworked, at the breaking point, and that she never gets any help from anybody (not true). When somebody does help her, she complains that she had to do most of the work because they didn’t know what they were doing. I used to pity her because she really seemed stressed, but over the years I have noticed that she actually gets less done than everyone else because she’s horribly inefficient – to the point of incompetence. The absolute worst part is that our manager loves her and points to her as a model employee. He says that everyone should be putting in the extra effort that Mrs. Martyr does. What he doesn’t know is that she has to work longer and harder because she’s bad at her job, and it’s making the rest of us miserable. Should I give our manager the 411 or should I stay silent and suffer along with Mrs. Martyr like everyone else?

– Currently Silent Sufferer

Before you go off and do something half-cocked, perhaps you should ask yourself: If you take away a martyr’s martyrdom, what does the martyr have left? You pull Jesus off the cross, take off his crown of thorns, patch up his nail holes and that nasty spear wound, and who is he, really? Sure, son of God and all that … water walker … faith healer … fish multiplier …  wine maker … part-time carpenter, but you take away his excruciating schlep down the Via Dolorosa and basically you have a dilettante nepo baby who thinks he knows how the world ought to be run. Not quite Donald Trump, mind you, but something in the same universe. I imagine that back in the BC era, dilettante nepo babies probably had their allure. They were certainly rarer than they are today – especially ones with humility and compassion. Nowadays the world seems to be chock-full of them, and you know what their problem is? They haven’t suffered enough, and that is precisely what makes them so insufferable.

If you don’t believe me, look no further than our bloated, megalomaniacal, moral cesspool of a president who literally can’t open his mouth without spewing unintelligible garbage and outrageous lies. This fucking guy, who … puzzlingly … even the people who voted for him admit they can’t stand, could use a humbling, cross-toting 600 meter slog up the Via Dolorosa. Honestly, maybe just an asshole gym teacher with a penchant for punishment pushups would have done the trick, but somehow Donny Jiggles made it to full-grown adulthood without catching a serious ass beating. Why? Because he was coddled by private school sycophants and groveling underlings his entire life. His fate was sealed. He was born and bred to be an insufferable windbag egomaniac. Rich people: Your system is broken.

Incredibly, through some bizarre twist of espionage, a Russian operative handpicked Deplorable Don from a pile of Epstein Island compromat piss tapes and decided he would be the perfect asshole to undo the very fabric of American society. Goddamn, those Russian agents are good at their jobs, aren’t they?

So, think hard before you deny your co-worker the comforting constancy of her misery and suffering. She might indeed be incompetent, but your boss might miss his succubus and you might end up in his crosshairs. Unless you’re really into suffering yourself, maybe it’s best you don’t try to crawl up on the cross with her. If your boss hasn’t figured our Mrs. Martyr’s game by now, your gentle nudge – or full-on exposition – probably won’t change his mind. You just need to change yours and let bleeding martyrs bleed.

This article appears in November 14 • 2025.