Sans Fig Leaf
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"It's different when it's not yours"
20 March, 2008
I once worked in an office
with about a dozen employees. About once a week we'd have a company
meeting. Often they were quite short. The owners usually brought
donuts. They were as much about socializing as business.
As the company grew larger
the meetings began to get a bit unwieldy. The informal manner no longer
was quite as productive. Departments no longer consisted of only one or
two people. It was easy to get bogged down in details that could be
handled in smaller groups. So the meeting was scaled back to a monthly
affair.
When the company grew
larger, still, the meetings went quarterly. Departments and managers
had more frequent separate meetings. Soon there was no room in the
office large enough to hold everyone, and a separate space had to be
rented.
The owners calculated what
the cost of the meetings was in person-hours/salary--and freaked out.
So the next quarterly meeting was scheduled for lunchtime, and instead
of donuts, pizza was ordered from somewhere. After the first lunch
meeting, a few people with dietary issues (whether medical or
otherwise) put in polite requests for something they could eat,
which seemed perfectly reasonable to the owners, and prompted the owner
to put out a general apology for not thinking of the dietary things.
I was on a product team at
the time. One of the other members of the team was our tech support
manager. At the first team meeting after the apology, he was grousing
to anyone who would listen about how stupid and selfish it was that
people actually complained about the food. "It's free food! If you
don't want it, don't eat it!"
I said I understood his
perspective, and that I had been quite happy with the pizzas myself.
However, since employees were being told to give up their lunch break
for this meeting, it wasn't reasonable to think of the food as a gift.
The meal was being offered as compensation for taking the lunch break
away. As a sales manager in the meeting put it, "People have to eat.
You either give them time to have a meal, or you give them the meal."
He couldn't see it that
way. He insisted that we didn't understand what he was trying to say.
He went further and accused us all of not even trying to understand.
I couldn't really take him
very seriously, because a couple years earlier when he was first hired
(moving from out of state to take the job) my cubicle had been near his
office. One morning I had overheard a loud and angry rant, seasoned
liberally with profanities, as he screamed into the telephone at some
poor customer service person at the local electric company. He was
angry because there were taxes on his electric bill! How dare they
charge him taxes! It was unfair! Didn't they know the cost of living
was high enough?
His boss stuck his head in
the office when the phone call ended, and casually tried to defuse the
ire by pointing out that everyone paid the taxes. The state didn't
charge an income tax, and public services had to be paid for somehow.
If he were really upset about taxes, it might be more productive to
call a legislator, who could possibly do something about it. His
response: "What if I don't want their public services?"
A few months later when a
big snow storm trapped several of the employees in their homes, he was
the one stomping around the office, screaming and cussing about why the
county or state or someone didn't have more snow plows. How dare they
let weather inconvenience him! Didn't they realize that people needed
to get to work?
In short, all problems in
life fell into two categories: inconveniences to him were all great
disasters; inconveniences to other people were trivialities with no
importance at all. No amount of logic, reasoning, or explanation would
ever persuade him that someone else's problems were real until he
became mature enough to look at things from someone else's perspective.
I used to believe that
everyone could be reasoned with, if we just found the right words,
pointed out the facts, and discussed things until everyone understood
each other. But people can't be forced to empathize. What appears to be
a compelling fact to one person, is a trivial detail to another. What
seems to be a perfectly reasonable accomodation to some, is a great
burden to others.
Usually I can argue the
opposing viewpoint in a more compelling manner than the people who
actually hold the opinion, which leads me to believe I'm given their
side a fair shake. Though it does raise the question, more compelling
to who? I've learned to place a certain value on inductive and
deductive reasoning, on analysis, and on the value of philosophical
debate. But just because I see things that way, doesn't mean that it's
right.
Which is why it's
important to keep trying. Trying to persuade other people, trying to
understand their perspective, and always trying to understand my own
limitations.
If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.
--John Stuart Mill
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