Politeness, watching slugs play rugby.

When people have a pop at your kids, and when there is an unequal balance of power in the pop-er's favour, it is prone to bring out the momma bear.


I have a friend, lets call her "Beryl", who feels conflicted because back in the day she was raised in an eggs-is-eggs environment, where you said it like you see it, where the strongly worded and vocal disagreement was had, everyone knew where they stood, there was a victor and the vanquished, and then you all shook hands and got on with life.


Nowadays Beryl feels it is death by a thousand cuts.


There's lots of being required to be polite, to word emails carefully, to not be seen to be too authoritative, to be seen to be collaborative, to be reasonable.


In the immortal words of my mum, "I'll Give You Reasonable!!!" while rolling up her sleeves and taking out her hoop earrings!


Someone forgot we live politely nowadays, they got above themselves and verbally abusive, and forgot that She Is Defended.
So, off went emails for traceability, politely worded requests, a declaration of my position in this matter, polite polite polite.


This would be Gibbs from NCIS's nightmare in boatbuilding terms because it is going against the grain.  There's a reason you should go with the grain, it smooths the edges, you get better results, but I guess in Lumberjack terms it is necessary to go horizontal in the cut rather that vertically as per the growth if you want to fell the beast ahead of you.


Now, Beryl's tummy is tied in knots because historically this situation could have been resolved by now but it is so very, excruciatingly slow, like watching slugs play rugby, and this is not a situation with which we have an ample quantity of time. 


So, move it people!  Get a wiggle on, light a fire under your feet, get cracking, get it sorted because your way is not necessarily correct.