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> This is so true! At my previous job (which I miss, but it was
> telecommunications,
> and I was worried that they would finally figure out that they didn't
> need me full
> time) one of the engineers started yelling at me for seemingly no
> reason. I yelled back. He later brought me an Oberweiss
> chocolate shake and an apology, and we've been buddies ever since.
I can totally relate to this---in a previous career in the early 1980s
at a defense manufacturer I was in a regular meeting with a project
manager (ex-Navy officer) who continually interrupted people, questioned
them on every little thing they said, and generally made everyone
miserable. Engineers would cringe and retreat into stuttering in this
meeting. He did it to me, too, when I tried to report on my little
portion of the project (plus, as the only female in the group, he'd
always tell me to get the coffee, which aggravated me no end). One
meeting I finally got angry and, at the umteenth interruption, said,
"Well, if you'd just shut up and let me finish a sentence, you'll get
your answers!" He stared at me and then mumbled, "oh, sorry, go ahead."
And he never, ever interrupted me again, and didn't ask me to get the
coffee, either. <G> Outside the meetings he treated me very well in a
very civil manner. It seemed that he respected people who could stand up
for themselves and resisted being run over.
So in this case it worked.
Nancy Kaminski
nancy -dot- kaminski -at- spanlink -dot- com
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