I think there are many situations where people want or are only capable at that time of different things...that no amount of confrontation will resolve.
I try not to confront people very often, and never in anger any more. I can be a formidable person when I act angry and I don't think it has ever acheived anything for me personally long-term.
For me being kind is more effective, and letting go the outcome I desire and letting the other person do what they need to do whilst makign them aware if necessary that my thoughts on the matter may be different!
I've been meaning to read more about non-dualism but I haven't had time. We are too dependent on models of right/ wrong, good/evil. People and behaviour is more complicated than that.
Welllll......
a funny thing happened to me at work recently.
I've been working for this particular organization far longer than I've ever worked anywhere else, and I've been on this particular job within the organization longer than I've ever stayed with any previous employer.
I'm talking close to a decade, OK?
I have about as solid gold a track record as anyone ever has had. You give me something to do and it gets done right, and it gets done on time, and there aren't any loose ends flapping around, either.
So: about two weeks ago, I get involved in something that has to be assessed by various members of my task team. I send them the information, and they send me the assessment. One of them asks me to obtain an electronic copy of the information for him.
There's just a couple little hitches. First, I only have it on paper. Second, I have to ask an outside organization for the e-copy. Third, we're prohibited from doing that, and complaints do get made, vociferously, when we do it. Fourth, the guy could just as easily have Xeroxed it for himself, it's only about ten pages.
So I email the guy that I'll see what I can do, but he needs to know it's 'against official policy' for me to ask. Nudge nudge, wink wink. I figure he's bright enough to understand this means I'll make a tactful attempt to bend the rules but I can't promise nuthin'.
Not five minutes later, this fellow shows up at my office and tells me in no uncertain terms that he called the external contact himself, because he's tired of my ... bullshit.
Verbatim quote, my dears.
After I get my jaw back up off the floor, I decide that I have bloody well had enough abuse to last me a lifetime, so I start working on an email to this guy's boss... and his boss.. and my bosses.
I'm about a third of the way in when the poor guy decides he wants to come back for more, but this time, it didn't quite work out to his expectations. Basically, I flayed him alive.
I raised my voice, and it remained raised for a full five minutes. I used language that I was certain the gentleman would understand; I explained in no uncertain terms that I work nights, weekends, and holidays, that I handle a full one third of the work for the entire department although I am one sixth of the nominal manpower, that I have had multiple complaints lodged against me for violating organizational policies in order to get information for ungrateful jerks like himself in the format in which they request it, and that I am sick and tired of receiving nothing in exchange but verbal and emotional abuse.
I waxed eloquent about our relative salaries, the ease of promotion for him and nonexistence of any parallel path for me; I spoke at length and candidly about the extent to which I have gone to get him and his peers the things they need to do their job, and the delight I take in having my teeth kicked down my f---ing throat by ungrateful b----rds like himself by way of thanks.
When I had finished speaking my piece, I threw him out of my office, the door of which I had insisted should remain open so that no passerby would have ANY doubt as to what was occurring, or why.
Immediately following which, I went to his boss, and HIS boss, and HIS boss, and told on myself, with the full backstory included.
And would you believe, it was universally agreed that the gentleman was no gentleman, and that I had shown great restraint and decorum in speaking as I did.
Now. To complete the picture.
I have been working since July 1983. I've been with this organization since July 1995, and in my present job since Easter 1998. This episode related above is the first time in my entire quarter century working life that I have EVER raised my voice to ANYONE, no matter how egregious their behavior, no matter how abusive their language, no matter how unprofessional their actions.
I also made this quite clear to everyone with whom I spoke, and since most of them have seen me on this job for the better part of the decade plus that I have been here, they know it perfectly well.
A funny thing has happened.
People no longer seem quite as inclined to try to take advantage of me.
People who previously seemed to regard me as some kind of cross between a patsy and a doormat seem to have stopped doing that.
People have relaxed around me. I've been invited to lunch, and people have asked to join me when they see me in the lunchroom. Not to gossip about this, either. Simply to eat with me.
Oh - and - coincidentally - the gentleman who started it all has admitted to everyone involved that indeed he did, and that every word I spoke to him was more than deserved.
He'd done this to me once before, you see, a few years ago. But then, I chose the high road, and turned the other cheek. I guess he felt that it was perfectly safe to go on doing it.
I guess he knows now that this is no longer true, and I suspect that a few other people have begun to realize that self-restraint is not, after all, the same thing as weakness.
Will I ultimately be penalized for this? Only time will tell. But for now, paradoxically enough, it appears that what I did was somehow something that many people felt was long overdue.