Late Night Curator @late-night-curator - Tumblr Blog

some legends are told some turn to dust or to gold but you will remember me for centuries

Idk why McPhee was ever portrayed as being an uptight and difficult boss. From his perspective, since he doesn’t know the exhibits come to life, Larry was just an objectively terrible night guard.

On Larry’s first night, the minifigures being displaced tells McPhee that Larry was playing with the (most likely pretty fragile) exhibits like toys. Then, Larry has the audacity to joke about it.

On Larry’s second night as the GUARD he somehow loses an entire life-sized wax statue. He doesn’t even have an explanation as to why this happened.

On the third night, Larry can’t stop 3 extremely old men from taking multiple very valuable exhibits out of the museum, even if he does get them back.

And after all of this Larry keeps his job. There was not a single night under his care where nothing went wrong. In the future, McPhee continues to only get mad at Larry when things go extremely wrong, and even after everything he’s willing to help Larry commit fraud involving THE BRITISH MUSEUM. If he’s already that much of a ride-or-die for Larry, imagine how he sees him after he learns that the exhibits are alive and Larry has been doing much more than he ever knew.

In conclusion: McPhee is a kind man who was worn down by the stress of running a museum and he and Larry should have kissed

late-night-curator

As someone who has worked a considerable amount of time at museums, McPhee is so realistic on several levels. But actually, so is the fact that Larry wasn’t fired. Let me explain:

-Museum directors both have to manage down and up. Board of Directors can be fucking nuts. Some are great. Others are a bunch of rich pricks and/or retired people with nothing better to do but LARP being important (and as much as I love museums, no, you are not important when you are on a board of an institution that’s claim is hoarding historical thing, often stolen)

-They’re one person answering to both employees and the board. See above. You have to argue to these people you and your fellow employees jobs matter and should be compensated correctly all while the employees want to eat you and the board alive because few museum employees are paid living wage.

-You are on the hook for everything. Exhibit missing? Your fault. Event goes wrong? Your fault. You could be in a coma for any of it and people would still blame you because you didn’t plan for it 6 months out.

-A lot of institutions have the workers who have been around forever (see old night guards). Sometimes they’re great! Sometimes not so much. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard of or known them to be the people that keep a place going or outright steal things. Sometimes it’s the same people. Now imagine when that happens being their boss and knowing but also knowing they know more than you about the institution and have better credit socially. Yah, you would want them gone, but how? Forced/suggested retirement is the only way. And hence the plotline for NATM state is set.

-Also all of the above but with nepotism hires. Board won’t let you fire so and so kid because their linked to an important donation, exhibit or money wise. Enter here Cecil as his father was the archeologist that dug up Ahkmenrah. No McPhee you can’t fire him. What will people say when you fire one of the sons of the reason we have an ancient Egypt exhibit.

So yes, McPhee is mega stressed. But as annoyed as he was with Larry, what did he actually do? Mess with a miniature? We can fix that or get new ones. (In fact the only unrealistic part besides McPhee chewing Larry out for Jed and Oct is he didn’t then turn around and go “and since you are clearly a gifted miniaturist, you now also gotta clean them every night.) Lose a caveman wax figure? We can get a new one, take it out of his paycheck. From McPhee’s point of view Larry is an idiot but at least he’s not stealing anything or a threat to the museum. Just a goof. He can handle that. Plus every once in a while he goofs right and helps. So yah he’s not going to fire Larry unless he has to and frankly he’s got other employees, a board, insurance, and a whole lot else to worry about.