Unpleasant people and what we do

  • Well, if I’m try­ing to climb back on the blog­ging wagon, so to speak, I sup­pose I could do a lot worse than talk about a meet­ing — maybe it would be more accu­rate to say ‘alter­ca­tion’ — that I had on the job with an angry, unhappy woman. It hap­pened over a week ago, and I find I just can’t quite get over it. I won­der why that is, and I won­der how I could do bet­ter next time.

    I won­der if I have to go into much detail. I fig­ure that by the time any of us have lived very long, par­tic­u­larly if we have had typ­i­cal dayjobs, we acquire our own col­lec­tion of sad sto­ries. But here are the basics: I went to a board meet­ing as a con­sul­tant, and this woman — I’ll call her Arlene, since I don’t know any­body by that name — was a stranger to me. She stood up and at a com­pletely inap­pro­pri­ate time in the meet­ing, utterly denounced the prod­uct that Greg and I make for the board as a waste of money. It was a com­plete shock to me, although it was obvi­ous she had no idea who I was or why I would care. It would have been like a knife in my flesh if the board had seemed inclined to lis­ten, since this client is one of our most impor­tant. But it was obvi­ous that either because of past his­tory or mak­ing a hash of her case, no one was tak­ing her seri­ously. And so she didn’t advance her cause at all, and quite a few peo­ple came up to me imme­di­ately when the meet­ing adjourned for lunch to tell me not to worry.

    I was try­ing not to worry, but I was shaken and think­ing only of how much I needed to call Greg and tell him what hap­pened. But then, Arlene was sud­denly there in the park­ing lot next to me. She briefly intro­duced her­self and then — unbe­liev­ably — tried to pres­sure me in pri­vate to agree with her that our prod­uct was unac­cept­able. She was stand­ing too close and I was backed up against my car — def­i­nitely one of those ‘invad­ing your space’ sit­u­a­tions. She was talk­ing too abruptly and much too directly, given that she wanted me to com­mit pro­fes­sional hara-kiri. If I’d been 20 years younger, I think I might have fallen apart and either lost my tem­per or been ter­ri­fied and said some­thing stupid.

    But I’m not 20 years younger, and, sad to say, I’ve seen too many peo­ple like this. When I looked her straight in the eye, I saw a kind of wild­ness in her — boil­ing emo­tion, boil­ing need, even des­per­a­tion for… what? Telling Greg about it later, I asked his opin­ion: What in the world had she hoped to accom­plish by this ridicu­lous assault on me that was much too per­sonal to be pro­fes­sional? What was the best thing that could have come out of it?

    “Oh, that’s easy,” Greg said. “She could’ve made you cry.”

    That’s the same con­clu­sion that I came to. What makes peo­ple like this into peo­ple like this? Why would you use lit­tle busi­ness mat­ters that are here today and gone tomor­row as blunt instru­ments to try to make a stranger — a grown woman — cry?

    That’s the part I keep think­ing about, because I don’t have a good answer. I think after the inter­ven­ing days, I have sym­pa­thy because, as a church father said, “every­one you meet is fight­ing a ter­ri­ble bat­tle.” I’ll never know her bat­tle. But sym­pa­thy isn’t enough.

    I have pity, but there I’m reminded of another story of the fathers. The story goes that at a monastery, a vis­it­ing abbot saw one hum­ble monk who was thor­oughly maligned by his broth­ers and yet gave no reply. When the abbot asked him how he man­aged, he said, “They don’t bother me, Father. They are only bark­ing dogs to me.” And the abbot was very sad­dened and told his com­pan­ion that the monk not only hadn’t pro­gressed far in the faith, but had fallen into error. Because peo­ple aren’t dogs, and just dis­re­gard­ing them in order to main­tain equi­lib­rium is under­stand­able, but not virtuous.

    I have a sus­pi­cion that what is miss­ing in my makeup is a real detach­ment from per­sonal attacks. And of course, that most trou­bling thing — love. It always seem to be in such short sup­ply, and yet I’ve been loved so greatly.

    So at the end, I’m in won­der at my own lit­tle­ness and at the lit­tle­ness of another. It’s been quite a lot to mull over.


    Related posts:

    1. Amaz­ing road­kill sights on Hwy. 54
    2. Love the planet, hate the people
    3. Another mur­der­ous saint
    4. When famous peo­ple fast
    5. People-animal embryos

    May 3rd, 2009 | Grace | 3 Comments |

3 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 05.03.2009

    Wow what bril­liant thoughts about an unset­tling sit­u­a­tion. Prayers and hugs
    (it is good to see you!)

  • s-p

    It will prob­a­bly be lit­tle com­fort, but the thing I’ve dis­cov­ered over the years is there is a direct cor­re­la­tion between how socially inap­pro­pri­ately peo­ple act and how “inap­pro­pri­ately” you have to deal with them to get them to under­stand what you are saying/doing. What would be ghastly behav­ior to a “nor­mal” per­son is just “what is” to some­one like that. I used to lay awake at nights wor­ry­ing and rumi­nat­ing about how rude I was to some­one like that, but I also laid awake at night rumi­nat­ing about, when I was polite and com­posed, that they esca­lated and didn’t get what I was try­ing to say and I felt beat up and vio­lated. So for nor­mal peo­ple its a no win. On a pro­fes­sional level it sounds like her co-workers have her num­ber, so you don’t have to worry there. On a per­sonal level, there’s noth­ing wrong with just look­ing her in the eye and say­ing, “That’s not my deci­sion to make, it is your company’s. When they tell me I’m point­less, then I’m point­less.” Then get in your car and drive home. Even Jesus and St. Paul spoke out when slapped down unjustly by a peon when they were on trial. There’s noth­ing unchris­t­ian about assertive­ness, there is some­thing unchris­t­ian about not hav­ing any com­pas­sion for some­one who is obvi­ously severely dam­aged, Basi­cally, you don’t throw them under the bus to their peers, but you don’t have to let them drive the bus over you either. Her gift to you as a human being is she touched a raw spot that might need some heal­ing. You can work on you even if you can’t work on or with her.

  • Grace

    s-p:
    Wow, there’s a lot of good stuff in there. I espe­cially like the last few sen­tences, which I may have to write up and make into a cross-stitch to hang on my wall.

    You’re spot on about the other peo­ple in the room. They really didn’t like what she was doing, and that gave me some peace. The other peace I’ve found when it comes to these kinds of busi­ness deal­ings is to con­sider always that peo­ple are talk­ing about a third entity — the Busi­ness — that isn’t in the room and def­i­nitely isn’t me. So even if she meant me to take offense, I was able to recall that (as you say) SHE wasn’t my client and so her cri­tique was fairly irrelevant.

    It could’ve gone worse for her. I felt vic­to­ri­ous because I stayed neu­tral. If it had been Greg at the meet­ing, how­ever, she would have heard some Pure Truth that would’ve made her ears bleed, and it would’ve been done with such com­plete charm that she wouldn’t know what to say. He has a gift.

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