RE: Beaten by the mob

[SteveFJong -at- aol -dot- com]

In my personal experience, bullies are empowered by passivity. The ones I 
remember from grade school stopped the instant I turned and hit them back. 
The only thing about them that got inflamed was their eyes 8^)

As an adult, I haven't thrown any punches. But it's the nature of our 
profession that we get a lot of behavioral crap thrown at us. I cringe when I 
see writers, particularly females, adopt the "I'm so dumb and helpless" 
approach, which locks them into a subservient role that demeans us all. (Once 
you roll over on your back and expose your tummy, you'll never be the top 
dog.) I rarely push back or lose my temper, but if anything I wish I'd done 
so more often; then I wouldn't have had to endure some of the crap I've taken 
over the years.

The behavior described in this thread can be summarized as "I'm going to 
abuse you verbally, and if you don't fight back I won't deal with you." It's 
an abuse of power and position. It's also unprofessional, the adult version 
of bullying (and frankly, in an adult it reflects a disturbed personality). 
Such behavior drives away whole segments of personalities who would rather be 
treated equitably, lowering the diversity and strength of the team. I've 
never seen any correlation between the loudness of the voice and the value of 
the idea. (If anything, it's the other way around.) 

The way any organization should operate is simple: professionalism is 
expected from and demanded of all parties, and unprofessional behavior is not 
tolerated. I'm not just talking about the engineer who bullies, or the writer 
who does or does not shout back; I'm talking about the managers of both 
parties as well. For either manager to demand professionalism of only one 
party tacitly condones bullying behavior. That is a corrupt practice. (Given 
the state of the economy, it's also inexcusable; there are plenty of good 
engineers out of work too.)

I don't advise popping the adult bully in the eye, but you have to stand up 
for yourself. The trick is to find the balance between being assertive and 
being aggressive. The greatest audience reaction I've ever seen at an STC 
Annual Conference was when a fellow DECcie presented a paper on passive, 
aggressive, and assertive behavior. He played videotaped vignettes of 
handling a typical engineer/writer interaction in each way. We laughed 
ruefully at the tape of the browbeaten writer who mumbled, "My parents are 
flying in this weekend, but I guess I could tell them not to come and work on 
this instead." His message was that assertiveness was the proper response. 
(Something like: "I understand that these changes have to go into the manual, 
but it's 5 PM on Friday and I have plans for the weekend. I will get to them 
first thing Monday morning, but we will have to adjust the schedule.") But 
when he showed the "aggressive" response (something like "What part of 'late' 
don't you understand?"), the audience--and it was a big one--leapt up and 
roared their approval. It wasn't the reaction he wanted, but it was cathartic!

-- Steve

[As I was composing this reply, the Talking Moose said, "An appeaser feeds 
the crocodile, hoping to be eaten last." How apropos! If you don't know what 
I'm talking about, never mind--it's a Macintosh thing 8^)]


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