I am afraid I am not going to be able to watch the republicans liveStrong cancer forum today, if anyone else has the opportunity to see it at MSNBC.com live at 10AM central time, let me know what happens, OK?
At the dinner table the other night, I asked Mandy about her day at work. She is a cashier at a grocery store. She answered with the usual mumbled, "fine". I pressed the issue with some more questions, "anything interesting happen? any rude customers?" etc. Finally she told us a little story.
During Mandy's training they really emphasized the need to card anyone who might possibly be under the age of 40. Recently her boss amended this policy to tell her to card everyone who looks younger than 80. She also has to enter into the computer the person's birth date from their driver's license in order to process a purchase of alcohol. Mandy gets a customer who is purchasing beer, she asks for an id and the guy gets irate. He is obviously over 18, possibly over 40, but according to her boss she has to insist on an id. So the guy leaves the store in a huff without purchasing his beer. Don't know why, maybe he is offended? Maybe he doesn't happen to have an id on his person at the time? Anyways, we were reassuring Mandy that she did the right thing etc. I was speculating that sometimes men don't like to be told what to do by women, some men are just like that. I mean this guy went off on Mandy about the whole id thing and it was shocking, like where did that come from? I wondered if it was a male chauvinist thing?
Jeff then told us a story of a work related confrontation. Years ago as an Airman stationed in Korea during an exercise (training). Jeff was in charge of guarding the hospital. A police officer came to the hospital and this police officer was carrying a gun. Jeff had to tell the police officer that he could not bring the gun into the hospital. The police officer said that he was not allowed to unholster his gun. Jeff had to insist, telling the cop he could not enter the hospital with a gun. Jeff says that his gun (some machine gun thing) was bigger than the cops gun, and he eventually unholstered his gun and handed it over to Jeff. After giving the gun to Jeff the cop informs Jeff that they don't trust him with bullets so the gun is not loaded anyways. Jeff tells us that while his gun was bigger, they didn't trust him with any bullets either. So there you have it, Jeff's big confrontational story involving a standoff with a machine gun and a cop over who will give up their gun first, sans bullets.
I think perhaps this is one of those stories that Jeff has to tell. He is the world's best story teller, too bad he doesn't have a blog. Do you have any work related confrontational stories?
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I Think I May Have A Screw Loose
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I saw my podiatrist yesterday. One part of my foot is still hurting (it's
been almost two months since the surgery). He thinks it may be one of the
screws ...
5 comments:
A friend of mine and I were discussing this same sort of thing this morning. He is very tall - about 6'4", and he said that he had to talk to someone about an incident that had happened with his daughter at school. He said that he had a hard time talking to people about things because they immediately think he's being confrontational when he's not - he's just talking about it. He didn't know if it was his height, or if he's a man, or what, because he said no matter how tactful he tries to be, others get it wrong.
I thought that people are just so used to no one saying anything when they're unhappy about something that they immediately react negatively by thinking that a person is being confrontational...when really they're just shocked that anyone actually said or did anything. It's kind of the same when someone sticks up for themselves or enforces a rule that people don't want to follow.
That was long and rambling, sorry.
Not really a confrontation -- an email thing. Our library is showing Spike Lee's When the Levee Broke over the next three days. I was the one who sent out the email. I got an email from a faculty member asking why we always showed such drivel -- why couldn't we have good programming. Considering I don't consider this doc about Katrina to be drivel, I was shocked. I debated whether or not to reply and finally decided not to.
I used to work at the world headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist church. My first day on the job I met a nice older lady who was the parent of a couple of kids I went to school with. We hit it off right away and quickly became friends. About day 3 of my new job there, I was over on the other side of our department near a storage closet, when the department secretary told me to "join her in the closet" where she shut the door. She then promptly told me that I should not befriend this person because it would look bad on my work performance and that this person was a trouble-maker. I just nodded and didn't say a thing, because it was obvious who the real trouble-maker was. Thankfully I've never had an experience quite like that again, and the friend I made there is still my friend today -- 14 years later. It was while working there that I first learned what kind of back-stabbing goes on in a corporate environment.
I think the horrible shooting incident at the Fairchild AFB hospital by a disgruntled man thrown out of the AF because of his mentle state is where that ruling came from.
i worked as a waitress for 10 years, many of which were spent in sports bars. people are often jerks about showing ID. Mandy did the right thing, and so did you. It will most likely happen again. sad, that people will act that way around teenaged girls, but true.
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