In this article, the author describes her experience with the damaging effects of the rigid division of the university environment in two mutually exclusive camps: faculty and staff. That separation is becoming increasingly untenable as the academic work force changes. With full-time, tenure-track faculty jobs becoming scarcer, a large contingent of Ph.D.'s has emerged -- people who are pursuing so-called nonacademic careers within academe. The abundant literature on alternative careers for humanities Ph.D.'s generally poses two paths: academic and nonacademic. Little of the literature deals with those who fall in the gray area in between. There are dozens at the author's university, and the same holds true at many other institutions. The most visable of the author's fellow nonacademic colleagues are professional librarians, and university-press editors, but others are associate directors of interdisciplinary centers, directors of scholarship and student-development programs, student-affairs professionals, study-abroad coordinators, career counselors, diversity trainers, academic advisers, even financial managers. Although working at the university has brought certain benefits, being welcomed as an equal is difficult. The main difficulty, it seems, stems from the highly stratified environment of the university, where people are assigned to one of two large and rarely overlapping castes: faculty or staff.