Turf Wars
This happened a while ago, but it still bugs me.
The officers of a club asked me to give the web-site a much-needed face-lift. I emailed the club’s discussion list asking for feedback / suggestions. The feedback from that was frustrating. One luddite insisted that the site work with Netscape 4. Then he pointed to my site as proof that I wouldn’t design something that would work for his crappy-ass browser. I tried my best not to take this as an insult to my skills. A few other negative comments. Frustrating, but I mostly expected this.
Then someone I trusted piped up. He mentioned that I might be treading on the toes of the people who normally maintain the site. At this point, I threw in the towel, forgetting that I had a mandate for this, since I didn’t want to step on toes, and figuring that the maintainers would do the work. I even apologized in case I stepped on the maintainers toes… didn’t hear a peep back from them. This is why I no longer volunteer to help this club anymore.
Why does this still bug me? Because months later, nothing has been done to the site. Turf was being protected at the expense of getting things done. I hate that.
Being Nice While Other’s Aren’t
There’s a group trip coming up. In order to get a good room, Dina and I unabashedly played the pregnancy card. The good rooms provide definite benefits for Dina. If we didn’t have a good room, we’d probably not attend.
We were asked to share our room so more people could have good rooms. We reluctantly agreed both to be nice, and to increase our chances of getting a good room through the secretive room selection process. Then we found out that others declined to do so. Somehow that pissed me off.
Now we’d like to request that we not have to share either. But that would be hypocritical, and I refuse to do that. We feel bad even expressing the fact that we’d prefer not to share but would if necessary. A big part of me just wants cut off my nose to spite my face and bail on the trip, no matter how much we’d miss it.
Communication
Last week, I noted, separately, to two people that communication wasn’t working well between them. How did I know it wasn’t working well? A combination of observation and them flat out telling me. What happened? The messenger was shot.
My bad. I got people defensive by not communicating well enough that no one was blaming anyone.
My bad. I need to learn that most people don’t want to be helped. They just want to be told that things are going well… and that more importantly, they are doing well. Alternately, I need to learn how to help people so they don’t get pissy.
My bad. I need to learn that most people have a view of reality and don’t like that view challenged. Alternately, I need to learn how to perturb people’s perception of reality without scaring them.
Unfortunately there is no right answer except to continue to be as polite, helpful and strong and we can. In face of inner torment, my colleague advised me to think about how other’s felt vs. my feelings to change perspective. I realized there are many ways of “Thinking of others,” and I needed to focus more on “thinking of others w/o factoring myself in.” Somehow, I always think bringing another being into the world helps with that.
hmm. I had a similar situation today and made the same “mistake.” I know I am in the right, but as somebody else pointed out to me yesterday, it doesn’t matter how I view the situation, it’s how the other party percieves it. This is particularly difficult for me as I always try to see things in the bigger picture, working for the common good of mankind in little everyday steps. A big part of me still believes (and feels) that the common good is not worth sacrificing to satisfy one person’s pride, and apparently that makes me an asshole. So be it, I guess, for now. If I need to change, I hope it happens before my own little man takes on this apparently improper judgment.