In this article, the author considers a topic that is not talked about much: the working conditions of business communication teachers. In 1990, a special issue of "Business Communication Quarterly" focused on stress in this field, and it identified unstable academic appointments and the lack of departmental support as two main causes. In the mid-1990s, Iris Varner and Paula Pomerenke gave several memorable Association for Business Communication (ABC) presentations on the demise of Illinois State's business communication program. But business communication teachers have been largely silent about the less-than-ideal circumstances in which many of them teach. The author thinks their close affiliation with the business disciplines has a lot to do with this. On some level, she thinks business communication teachers have decided that if they are underpaid and undersupported, it's because they deserve it--that what they teach just isn't valuable enough to warrant the same rewards that the other disciplines get. Plus, they don't like to come across as whiny or oppositional; those aren't approaches that come naturally to people who are trying to teach students how to work well with others to achieve business goals. But the author doesn't think the logic of the marketplace is a logic they should accede to. As business leaders everywhere attest, what business communication teachers teach may well be the most valuable courses in their business students' programs of study. So with this talk, the author: (1) explores reasons why business communication teachers find themselves at the fringes of the academic table; (2) considers what that is costing them and their students; and (3) thinks about steps they might take to stand up for good teaching conditions more than they have thus far.