So I knew this day was coming. As I’ve said a few times, I have this recurrent blog-fear based on a time when I got blog silenced (not to silence me). It’s a weird hangup. But it’s related to another hang-up: people read me as angry when I’m not and make wide-ranging accusations.
There’s a phenomenon called “mobbing.” Here’s a full-0n description of it. But let me put it in my own words. Sometimes people are enormous pieces of shit. For example, a person might make a claim about someone that cannot be undone. This is often in the form of attacking a minority, a woman, a fat person, etc.
It happened to me during my studies. It happened to me in a particularly insipid way. I’m going to tell my story now. Know as you read it that I am very literal when I say this: I’m not telling this story to look for sympathy or to try to besmirch anyone. I’m telling this story because I know this happens to other people, and I know some of those people know me. I want them to know that it happens to people who don’t really deserve it. I want them to know it’s okay to walk away from it.
So here’s the deal with me. If you know me AT ALL, meaning if you’ve spoken to me for more than about five minutes, you know three things pretty quickly:
- I’m really, really nice. Not bragging, because it’s a weakness in most cases, but I genuinely care about people. In fact I care so much about people that I am often misinterpreted when I’m trying to make sure someone else isn’t being hurt. I accept this about myself because I like being that person. It took a long time, but I love myself.
- I’m logical, even though I am extremely emotional. I need to understand why a thing is happening or why I’m being asked to do something. If it doesn’t make sense to me, I won’t get mad. I won’t even get mean. I just keep asking questions. If that’s what it means to be an asshole. I’m an asshole. Otherwise, I just want to understand.
- I am literal. I know how to be subtle if I need to, but I have no taste for it. If I don’t care for you and you keep bothering me, I will tell you. If I think you messed up, I will tell you. If you hurt me, I’ll tell you. I know how to read between the lines and I’m well enough versed in rhetoric that I can be passive aggressive, but I don’t see the point. It’s just not me. I’m not important enough to toy with people.
These three things leave me wide open for a particular type of mobbing. It’s similar to “gaslighting,” if you know that concept. I’m going to call it “projecting dickhead.”
Here’s how it works.
A. There is a misunderstanding. Usually this is work related. But someone says or does something I do not understand.
B. I ask what is meant, why they did this thing, etc. The motivation is simply to understand, usually because either literally or emotionally (or both) I need to know. I promise I’m not the three-year-old asking “why? Why? Why?”
C. The person doesn’t answer me but instead says something else that doesn’t make sense.
D. So I ask again for clarification. I do so in a way that is not combative. Trust me, I know all about anger. I know how to be a jerk. I work hard NOT to be a jerk.
E. The person asking the question accuses me of being difficult, or being rude, or of attacking them.
And that’s the mobbing moment. Here’s why. It’s actually elegant. If it weren’t happening to me, I’d admire it in a strange way.
I am stuck in the situation. I can’t get my answer, because asking again will be taken as further hostility. And if I try to apologize, people cast it as sarcasm. Then, even worse, the die is cast for me until the end of my interactions with said person. I was, at one institution, told I was difficult to work with. It snowballed and followed me for over three years. I finally, after those three years, got someone to tell me why it started. Today, I share that secret.
I used a word in a project because one of my instructors suggested it. I didn’t really care for the word (nor did I dislike it– I just needed a word for a concept and that was suggested). Another faculty member told me that if I used that word it took on specific baggage. I said, “X suggested I call it that. I don’t think that’s really what I mean, in retrospect. I’ll change it.”
That statement was taken as me being brazenly disrespectful by “refusing” to research the origin of the term suggested to me and incorporate it into my work.
I will give you a second to look back, if you, like me, were a little surprised just now. Let me replay it.
- I coined an idea. I didn’t have a name for it. Person A suggested a name. I took it, for the draft, because I needed A name for the thing.
- Person B said “oh, that name you used has a bunch of baggage.”
- I expressed what I said in item 1, that it wasn’t even a word I actually chose, that it was just there because someone suggested it. I had researched the word. I didn’t think it was the right fit. I just hadn’t deleted that one instance of a word from my draft yet. So I said I’d change it. I actually, in that moment, shared a word that made more sense that went on to be the name of that idea. And the article about it is in print in a peer reviewed journal. I think I was right to not use the other word.
But because of that, I was labeled “difficult” and it went so far as for one person to tell me “I can’t help you with this” when I asked what I’d done to cause everyone to be so upset.
I learned a great deal from that experience. The first thing I learned is that mobbing is very, very real. The second thing I realized is that people hold biases against me due to my size, due to my cultural upbringing and race, and that people apparently don’t believe me when I tell them things in very plainspoken and clear English. People decide they want to hear me a certain way and they take away my agency. I can accept that. Mostly.
I thought I’d moved past the days of this sort of thing happening. I’m a professor now (little p). I lead meetings. I administer programs. I advise people. I work with corporate partners. I’m a grown up with a wife and five dogs and mountains of student loan debt. I feel like I’m at the point where I can be a peer to other scholars.
I was validated in a major way today by someone I met for the first time officially. That was wonderful, and I hope soon to tell the full story about that (some of that story cannot yet be told).
But as I was enjoying that moment, someone came at me mobbing-style. I’m currently working on a project with a fellow scholar. I’d call the person a peer, though not literally a peer, because in the academy there are people who are attached to the idea that ranks are a caste system. So yes, this person “outranks” me. If the academy became the army, this person could give me orders. But it’s not the army, so we were collaborating.
I built a project plan for myself and two other instructors. This fourth person saw this proposal and approved it. But when the time came to start executing the plan, the structure for the project changed. Politely, before anything happened, I emailed this fourth person and said “I’m a little worried that what we have planned isn’t going to work. I was thinking (insert careful explanation). Is that okay?” The person responded with a pretty hard-line no, explaining to me how the thing that had been accepted as a proposal was now not appropriate. So I said, “okay, sorry if I got this wrong, but let me make sure I was clear so we can figure out what to do,” and I explained the project another way, suggesting several alternatives. I wasn’t rude. I wasn’t snarky. I just explained what I thought was going to happen, what I saw happening, and how I thought we could make it work.
The other person chin checked me. In the process of essentially telling me my idea was nowhere in the neighborhood of the project concept, the person also suggested that I kick out two of the three members of my team (having not spoken to them) and that I convince two new people to join the project team during the week before our finals week on campus.
I responded, CC:ing the two people that I’d just had a recommendation to drop from the project, politely saying that I didn’t find that viable. I offered to step away so the other two could pick a new third if it was my ideas that were not meshing. That wasn’t a move made to be rude. That was an offer because I CARE ABOUT MY TWO COWORKERS. I then suggested yet another compromise, explained why I was confused, and I closed by sharing the sentiment that I hoped we could work this out and that if we couldn’t I hoped that not being able to make it work could at least be helpful to the next group to undergo the same process. Bear in mind the reason I said that is that this proposal was accepted by the person I was talking to. This person approved the project and was now telling me not only could it not happen the way I had proposed it but that nothing I’d come up with was a possible compromise. The person also offered no suggestions other than to kick two people who weren’t even in the conversation off a project they were both excited about. It felt to me like a situation that needed a resolution. And I was willing to fall on the sword to resolve it. I still am. But I’m not willing to fall on the sword that stabbed me.
When the person responded to my email, it was entirely defensive and expressed shock at how I’d harshly criticized the program and that person without knowing anything about the person or the program.
I hope that my not using names didn’t make that too hard to follow. If it didn’t, and you are a logical person, you can probably see why I was deeply upset. I was being easy going and attempting to contort my work any way I could to make it work for this person’s newly changed plans. I offered numerous alternatives and asked for suggestions. I didn’t even get combative when I was basically told that my best plan of action would be to dismantle my group and build a new one (this was said behind the back of the other two scholars). Then I was being criticized for saying things without knowing the fourth person and the program when… wait for it… ALL I WANTED WAS TO UNDERSTAND THE PROGRAM SO I COULD MAKE MY IDEAS WORK and I was TRYING TO GET TO KNOW THE PERSON. The person attacked me for not knowing what I’d been asking for, as if that was entirely my fault and I hadn’t been trying with all my power to get that information.
I had an enormous, heartfelt email written apologizing profusely and explaining myself, but when I got the end, I typed “and I know you’ve decided that I’m combative so you don’t believe any of what I’ve said here and you probably think my heartfelt response is passive aggressive.” So I deleted the whole email. I talked to one of my mentors. I sent a short apology that I later appended with a brief explanation of what I’d been trying to say.
I know that reacting in anger would be wrong. But just like that situation I mentioned earlier, it doesn’t matter if I react in anger or not, because the other person already decided that I’m being rude and cruel. There’s literally nothing I can do. If I’m nice– they’ll read it wrong. If I’m professional but emotionless, they will read it wrong. If I show even a hint of how frustrated I am, they will say “see? I told you he’s like that.” And if I do nothing, someone will claim I’m “pouting.” So I just blogged about it. I aired the dirty laundry, with names redacted to protect the innocent and make the account almost impossible to follow due to all the pronouns and generic names.
I’m done being mobbed. I’m going to go forward with the project just nodding my head, do whatever this person wants me to do, and I’m never going to interact with said person again.
Maybe that’s mean of me.
But you know what? It doesn’t even matter.
That person will think whatever I do is mean.
If someone is mobbing you, you’re not alone. And you don’t fucking deserve it. Keep being you. Do what you think is right. And when someone can’t respect that, let them have their right to be who they are. But back away. Slowly. Resume your own life. It’s not worth the effort to try to fix it. It isn’t a situation that can be fixed. And I say that as someone who tried less than five hours ago to fix the one I’m in, because I’m… well… I’m dumb sometimes.
Take it from the guy whose weakness is that he feels so bad when someone thinks he tried to hurt them that he falls over backward trying to fix it. You can’t. I don’t think it’s even about you. If this was about me, the person on the other side would be able to see that I’m trying so very, very hard to be polite.
I think the sad truth might be that the person on the other side knows they’re being unreasonable, and because they know that, they assume that I’m angry because they would be if the roles were reversed. So they’re sort of talking to themselves while I try to understand what I did. And I’m actually feeling bad because I think I hurt someone.
And if someone reads that who does this to me, all they’ll take from the entire post is that I said I was better than them.
Which isn’t what I said at all. I can see how a person might read that into it, but I’d just say that if that is what I meant. I don’t think I’m better than anyone. Well… except maybe Tom Brady. Screw Tom Brady and his man Ugg boots. That guy…
Also, while I was dealing with this weird email fallout, I made the plans to put one of our dogs down. So I was answering this person through tears, hiding in my car in the rain on the edge of campus, trying to console my wife over the fact that a brain tumor is taking one of our dear furry friends, preparing for a day of work. Again, that’s not a plea for anyone to feel bad for me. You shouldn’t. My life is pretty sweet. I mean I spent $15 on comic books today and bought my wife a Leia funko pop JUST CUZ. I like my job when someone isn’t trying to cast me as Kylo Ren. I had a great set of conversations with my students today and the games they made were absolutely amazing. Best set I’ve seen in years.
I tell you this because I want you to realize that somewhere in an office someone was assuming that the six-foot-one, three-hundred-plus pound Cherokee dribbling tears onto the screen of his phone as he typed was being cruel, when all he wanted was to not screw over two of his coworkers because a third person couldn’t aid him in making something work. This enormous man was hiding in a tiny dinged blue car on a rainy parking lot dealing with the joys and pains of his life and trying to be a good colleague. There wasn’t even a hint of malice in his heart. It was all about respect.
I could have easily judged the person on the other side of the conversation and said “did you really just suggest that I kick two people off this project without either of us even talking to them? What the actual fuck?” But I assumed the best, and I figured the other party was so interested in the solution they thought they figured out that for a minute they forgot about the two other people this would impact. I didn’t assume I was dealing with a mean person. I assumed someone had misunderstood or spoken incorrectly. And I wanted to figure it out so we could all be in harmony.
That’s the difference in knowing your subject and demonizing someone.
And people who are so self-absorbed that they just assume anger from someone on the other side of an exchange need to try harder. They just do. You don’t get to argue against that. Not with me. Not today.
We all deserve better.
And I will make anyone reading this a promise. I’ve lost so many times in my life and gotten back up that I’m not afraid to tell people what I think. If I want to insult you, I will. You won’t need to read into it at all. I am really, really good at it. Ask the people I play D&D with. Being nice doesn’t mean I don’t know how to be mean. Choosing not to be mean is why I’m not mean. Don’t insult me by thinking I’d wrap an insult in respectful tones. Seriously. That’s one of my pet peeves. If you’re going to talk to me, at least try to understand me. Because even if I’m exhausting myself and annoying you to no end with questions, my only major goal is to understand you. I will literally unravel myself to try to be a good listener and to give a person what they want or need from me. You don’t have to respect me as much or give me the same energy back (that would be unfair of me to expect– I’m a weird person). But don’t insult my efforts by miscasting me. Damn, dude.