Re: OT: Totally off-topic Xmas rant

Alan Lothian <alanlothian@xxxxxxx> wrote:

:
:Fred's an interesting case.
:

As in the same sense that these are 'interesting times'?

:
:I am about 99% certain the pair of us would
:get on like a house on fire, although of course the house might
:actually burst into flames.
:

I've been told by people meeting me for the first time that I am
positively charming. It really depends on whether I want to be or
not.

And so long as it's not my house, hey, what's a little fire?

:
:He really should go to irascibility
:classes.... hmmm, he probably teaches them. It's all right, Fred: mere
:banter.
:

Actually, I've been through all those 'touchy feely' training classes.
An interesting story, actually.

First thing we had to do what have both our bosses and our coworkers
fill out these little 'profiles' of us based on their answering a
bunch of questions. I got back two *really* different profiles. You
see, I tend to have this problem with people who think they are in
authority (to the point where my first boss in industry gave his
replacement the advice, "Just show him what the problem is and let him
go. If you start trying to tell him what to do and how to do it,
you're going to be *very* unhappy). Probably why I gravitated to the
areas in the military that I did, too.

The point of the profiles was much like the 'profiles' we were taught
in military leadership courses, although the slant was somewhat
different. The idea in the civilian world was that we should
understand that other people had these other styles and not judge
their competence based on them. Anyway, at the end of the first day
of classes, the class went through all the profiles on people. When
they got to mine, nobody could believe *either* of the two sets of
profiles were really intended to apply to me.

As one of the exercises, they paired us up with someone who had a
'diametrically opposed' style to the one our profiles said we had. I
was teamed with this lovely Lebanese girl. The purpose of the
exercise was for us to plan some project and talk about how to get
along and work with each other. As a gentleman, I thought I'd let her
decide what it was we tried to plan, so I asked her. Her response
was, "Our wedding!"

Now, she was already engaged, but part of the purpose of the class was
to get past little prejudices about differences in 'personal
conceptions', so I said, "Sure, ok." And so we did.

I'm not sure that 'surprised' is the correct word for the reception
our 'outbrief' received, but we certainly demonstrated that people
with radically different personal styles could get along and work
together, and that was the purpose of the class, after all....

:
:>
:> Usenet is not what it was, but there is still intelligent discourse to
:> be had here: you just have to dig harder and sift more swill to find the
:> pearls.
:>
:
:Paul, as UseNet shrinks towards death (we're looking at some sort of
:asymptote here; it will take a while) the signal to noise ratio is
:probably improving. Remember September? When, long before commonplace
:broadband access, all sorts of horrid culledge students would show up
:with their very first Net account? It's not that bad now. OK, it's
:pretty bad, but it's not *that* bad. UseNet's too difficult for the
:kiddywinks, anyway. The R U up 4 it generation.
:

Yep. The youngsters tend to fall into the 'personal style' group that
I find hardest to work with - the 'socializing consensus building'
sort. That's fine when you aren't actually trying to get anything
done or discuss anything serious, but intelligent signal seems to drop
as the inverse of the number of people arriving at 'consensus' about
it.

:
:I have
:retained my Stout English Cudgel, no need for noisy firearms. Frankly,
:I could do with the exercise.
:

Once you get inside a dozen feet or so, you're better off with a blade
or a bludgeon...


--
"Death is my gift." -- Buffy, the Vampire Slayer
.

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