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See, now, it just this minute happened again, but with a twist: I was buying some books for a trip I'm taking, and the bookseller came out from behind the desk to find one of them. About half a second later, some Henry-Bendix-looking spunkbubble starts taking her to task because "it's more important to be serving customers than to be out there sorting out the shelves," and making assorted comments apparently implying that a) she's an idiot and b) he's too important for this crap.
Now, my urge at this point is to say "Hey, you Henry-Bendix-looking spunkbubble, that is precisely what she's doing, and I'm the damn customer in question, so why don't you park your abusive mouth and wait your goddam turn," instead of which I begin my response with "excuse me, mate," which works better but doesn't feel as satisfying. The situation calms down, spunkbubble stops giving everyone a hard time, the security guard goes back to polishing his nails, and everything starts to move smoothly again, but my inner territorial mammal/caveman feels a bit pissed on.
Now, the twist here is that the nice lady behind the desk smiled cheerfully at me across the room and observed "I'll just have to do this because this man's making a bit of a fuss," whereupon everyone looked at Henry as if to say "you are a tiny person without a hope in hell of sex, ever". Which was very good.
The point is not that I want people to admit that they're wrong - I don't need confirmation from them to know that; the point is that (probably because I work in that kind of industry) I spend a lot of time in my real life catering to fragile egos of one stripe or another. I can deal with conflict strategically and get the result I want - it's just that even knowing that's what I am achieving, I long for moments of satisfaction where I allow my inner caveman to speak his scatalogical mind.
It's entirely possible this is why my Barbelith interactions are punctuated with short-tempered outbursts - this is broadly a consequence-free environment for me.
Honestly, that's an illusion, Boboss. If nobody has too much ego, nothing gets done either, because the sheer godawful futility of what is being discussed overwhelms the cock-out desire to get your way in that discussion. It's a lot friendlier, though...
You know, the funny thing about this is that I suspect if you gamed it, you would find that a single egotist/furious maniac in that situation might be welcome, if not always allowed to rule the thing, whereas a single apologist in a room full of maniacs is unwelcome, because they're always taking the blame and everyone starts to imagine they're the weakest link. I wonder how it works out in terms of efficacy, though; how often do I get my own way by being meek vs. how often would I achieve it by being spiky, and what are the long-term implications of those choices? |
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. Note how he looks like a sort of early Ernest Borgnine: 
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