A story of an awful tirade from an awful woman

Yesterday morning I was working at home minding my business when I was hailed from a complete stranger coming up my drive. Being polite and friendly I wandered out and said hello thinking that it was a delivery or perhaps someone needed some help (I was expecting a question about directions or something). I live in a very nice neighbourhood where I know all my closest neighbours and all the local shop keepers; my kids are friends with many of my neighbours kids too. I was expecting another of these pleasant conversations – hey it was a sunny day and I was in a good mood. Christmas in a couple of days.

What followed was an awful tirade from an awful woman starting with ‘HOW CAN YOU LIVE LIKE THIS, IT’S DISGUSTING, WHY AREN’T YOU DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT’. Completely taken aback and immediately on the back foot I’ve gone down the appeasement track – ‘Yes, I completely agree it’s messy, we’ve got plans in the pipeline to remedy it but we’re not ready yet’. This is the truth, I find little point in working for hours clearing and preening the garden when we’re planning to reshape it with a big digger soon – we have often put time in though, particularly my wife has spent days pulling up some of the weeds only for them to grow back (we spray too from time to time), but we have a family and like to spend time doing things we care more about – as would many people I expect. Well, the appeasement didn’t work, I got ‘THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH, YOU’VE GOT MUSCLES, PULL ALL THIS OUT’. I say ‘I agree it’s a mess, I don’t really have time to fix it we’re quite busy’. I get ‘WE’RE ALL BUSY’…. blah blah you get the point. It went on for about 10 minutes. The simple truth is that for us it’s not a priority.

So, smarting, shocked and a little ashamed of myself I get to work finding someone who can clear the plot quick smart before I get another berating. I found someone, they’ve been a bit pricey, but they’ve come around and cleared it out today. I’ve also used the opportunity of a day off and a skip bin on the property to break up an old fish pond that’s been bothering be for a while. So net net it’s a positive result right? Wrong!!

Now I’m so mad I can’t sleep

Now that I’ve woken from my ‘trance’ I’m left thinking what the ‘hell happened to me, why the hell did I do that?!’ I just let a horrible person blithely walk all over me while I moped around like a troublesome schoolboy and then quick smart did as I was told. I’m 38, I’ve worked in banks where I’ve been shouted at by the stereotypical equities trader – and not put up with it. How did this woman put me immediately on the back foot and in cow-towing mode rather that me telling her to piss off and come back when she can talk to me as an equal. I certainly wouldn’t let my kids talk to me like that.

I’m left so mad half at her and half at myself I’m struggling to sleep. I can only envision the smugness. Horribleness wins the day again dammit!

So why did I cave?

Generally I think it’s because when it’s unexpected you’re on the back foot and not sure if they have a point? You’re immediately apologetic (well you are if you want to be generally a decent person anyway). It’s not until later when you review the situation for probably the 100th time in your head that you start to berate yourself and imagine other responses and lament that you weren’t quick enough, or that you’re just not good enough at arguing, etc… etc…

In my current case there are a few reasons I think:

1. she has a point – the garden is a mess, an her main concern is a particular weed which is close to seeding – probably into her garden (I don’t know where she lives, must be close by though);
2. it was a bolt from the blue so I was gobsmacked and mentally unprepared to put this kind of childish behaviour down;
3. she’s obviously very upset and has probably been stewing on it for a while (perhaps she needed to be angry to have the courage to come up the drive) – I hate for people to be feeling like that;
4. I hate to think all our neighbours are getting upset with us – I like this community (this is the main reason I actually did something about it);
5. I’m busy thinking fast about all these scenarios while in the background she’s stomping around ranting in an epic tantrum so I continue to be unprepared to put the stroppy behaviour down;
6. I’m unsure of my position – perhaps harking back to some natural hierarchy encoding or something, she is older an wiser (perhaps not in this case) than me.

So what should I have done?

With 20/20 hindsight I think an opening salvo of appeasement was the correct response in this case and in so doing I gave her the benefit of the doubt that she is actually just an upset nice person. That not working? then a firm ‘cease and desist the personal attack’ and a request to discuss the matter civilly would have been the correct next action.

The ‘cease and desist’ action may or may not have worked – but at least I wouldn’t have stewed over my weakness in the situation for the last couple of days. It’s going to cost years at the end of my life I expect. I would still have gone ahead with the section clear – if just for reason 4 above – but at least I would have been clear on my reasons and she would have been clear that the kind of childish temper tantrum she was displaying would not be tolerated.

As it stand’s I’m still mad and trying to find a way through

Christmas is coming and the only person really being hurt by this whole debacle is me. What do I do to get past it?

Well, writing this is helping I think. I’m thinking just now that perhaps I need to change my view of an awful woman to just a ‘upset nice person’ and perhaps apologise for my tardiness? Perhaps the tantrum was very out of character for her? I would expect a thank-you and a sincere apology in that case, I’m open-minded to it but not hopeful.

It is unacceptable to behave like that though – especially straight off the bat

It was a childish temper tantrum – there’s no doubt about that. Be she a ‘upset nice person’ or just a born and bred ‘awful person’ it still stands that it was unacceptable to personally attack me and my family with a tirade of abuse straight off the bat. All it’s done is left bad feeling and sleep for us… I suspect she’s sleeping soundly.

She only needed to ask!!

We’re friendly and nice, we’d bend over backwards if asked by any of our neighbours. A simple request to ‘take out that thistle weed please’ would have been enough and would have been an excellent goodwill exercise. Instead she’s assumed we’re bad people and out to ruin her garden with our terrible weeds and I’m left running scenarios for what I’m going to say next time I run into her and feeling generally rather bad (seems like a grieving process). That’s very unfriendly, disrespectful and just not nice behaviour. I don’t like this woman and I’ve only just met her. Jeez if I was an unfriendly type I might have clocked her.

I certainly hope it doesn’t happen again.

try this in your IDE:

double total = 0;
for (int i =0; i <  10; i++){
  total += 0.1;
}
System.out.println(total);

Question: are you writing a game ? Answer: no; then use an effing BigDecimal!

Grrr…

On a lighter note – I’m lovin’ the new Ribbon concept in the Windows version. Who ever designed that deserves a pat on the back (and a big bonus). It takes a little getting used to but is just great when your up the learning curve.

If there is some friendly competition between the Word for Mac and the Word for Windows UI teams then I think the Windows team well and truly wins this round.

Jon

PS: If anyone knows how to increase the size of the toolbox or dock it please tell me how. Please – I’m dying here.