Don't Make Me Come Down There!

I do not like to "throw my weight around".

For one thing, I'm at an age now where my literal weight is a health consideration :-) ; I don't want to have enough to throw around with any significant impact. [So far so good, but it's an uphill battle.]

I don't like throwing it around figuratively either. Recently, I've been doing a lot of this, and repetition has not reduced my distaste for it.

I've found myself "leaning" on people in order to make them do their jobs - in situations where others were at serious risk of harm, because of these persons' inaction and indifference. I had to lean very hard, and it was pretty revolting, because this was a situation in which people could easily have been killed; that was obvious, yet nobody seemed to care. You'd think... but sadly, you'd be wrong. People were injured, several people in fact, and the indifference remained.

It's gone now, and so is the problem. But I feel as though I need a shower on the inside, because of the way I had to behave in order to get the issue taken seriously. Threat-making is not my style, even when the threat is legal, obvious, and entirely justifiable. Ugh. Brrrr....

Meanwhile, the Indifferent Ones are still very much with us.

I've also had to interpose myself between some contractors and a bullying manager. This story continues to unfold; I can't fully "anonymize" it until it's done, but suffice it to say: you haven't seen ugly until you've watched a bully switch sides, turn on one of their henchmen, and try to throw that person under the bus, instantly, to appease you, because they've suddenly realized you have more power than they thought.

I'm not sure what's ugliest about that: the instantaneous, cold-calculating betrayal of "their own", or the belief that I wouldn't see through it. Brrrrr, and ugh.

But this is where the rubber meets the road, in terms of dealing with abuse.

Somewhere back in these last 3 years of musings, I once made the comment that abuse must be constrained. That if unconstrained, it escalates, because abuse is a progressive disease, and to tolerate it is to reward it, as with any other progressive disease.

I was a bit too blithe about that, because I kind of forgot to add: guess who gets to constrain the abusers?

Who else? The people who recognize that abuse is going on. Who else can, or will?

And that means throwing your weight around, because abusers do not respect others' feelings or needs; they do not respect courtesy or civility; they respect power, and power only.

Ugh. Brrr. I need a bath.

To be continued....