At work, my boss told me today about something I said in a meeting yesterday that apparently offended someone, let’s say his name was Bob. My statement was about some documentation we’re all working on, stating that I felt it was explaining data processing so should probably include symbolic logic but I could be wrong because coworker Mary said that it’s NOT supposed to be processing logic. Apparently Bob felt that was some sort of personal attack on him. Boss told me just in a sort of “fyi” way, I don’t know why for sure, but I assume to remind me that anything I say can be misconstrued by people. Neither of us can figure out how he went from “maybe we should use symbolic logic” to “Bob is an idiot”, but whatever.
It made me wonder if this might be a good topic for a mundane and pointless thread. What totally innocuous statements have you made that someone read as a personal attack?
I once sent out an email to five people, proclaiming the money that had been deposited this week (I work for a not for profit). In the email, one person had raised a LOT of money this week. I said, “Oh, and good job, person X!” Come to find out that person Y had gone to my boss and complained that I was complimenting person X and it was offensive and I was being rude because I was singling everyone else out.
I hate people who are so quick to take offense to everything.
It’s not exactly what you’re talking about, but in this thing my son was involved in with about 10 other kids, they were going to have what was clearly a Christmas party-- everyone else celebrated Christmas-- with a lot of stuff that was clearly all traditionally Christmas stuff, even though it was kind of sanitized, like singing songs, as long as none of them were religious (eg, “Jingle Bells”).
I told the person in charge that it was OK to go ahead call it a Christmas party.
She said “Oh, no, we have a Jewish family,” and proceeded to give me a lecture on sensitivity.
I said that Yes, I knew, I was the Jewish family, and I didn’t want her not to just have a free hand with the party, and do what she wanted.
That seemed to hurt her feelings. Like, to her mind, she’d gone to a lot of trouble to make the party “inclusive,” and I’d dashed her hopes.
Email can be tricky and easily misinterpreted. However, I work for a bunch of lawyers. If I took offense to every questionable email in my inbox, I wouldn’t have made it through the first day.
I tend to refuse to apologize or even take seriously claims of offense over stupid shit.
What I do take serious is that if your boss is petty enough to bring it to your attention, it is more likely that it is part of a ‘paper trail’ being put together to discipline you or force you out.
After we sold our last house, Mrs. 74westy and I were going through it and making sure we’d get everything of ours out before handing it over. I was satisfied so I placed all our keys inside and locked the door. Just as I did, she said that she had left her notebook inside. She is a writer and her notebook is very important. It would be terrible if she lost it.
I knew I’d have to get the new owners to let me in and get it and if I was doing that, I wanted to be sure I got not only the notebook but anything else that might have been left there.
I’ve had bosses do that kind of thing all the time, without it being a paper trail to fire me. They seem to do it as “just letting you know” but I always think it’s a dumb thing to do. If they’re not trying to correct my behavior then there’s really no reason to even bring it up.
Once a boss relayed to me that another boss really disliked an email I sent even though she herself disagreed with him. She said she told him she’d “talk to me” about it, so I guess she had to in order to not make herself a liar. But if a complaint is stupid or unwarranted, then really, just let it die on the vine.
That boss was a complete and utter bitch, which just shows how stupid this issue is that this one time the boss backed me up 100%. The only reason I ever heard it is my boss told me as a funny, haha story.
My gf made fried rice Sunday night. Wanting to experiment, she used brown rice and cooked it along with dried shiitake mushrooms. I mentioned that I did not antipate good results.
Well, the mushrooms took forever to cook, so the rice was overcooked. Then, when it was fried it ended up as a single glop of sadness.
After dinner dishes were washed, I made a pot of long grain white rice. I refrigerated the rice and used it to make incredibly good fried rice the next evening.
We made fried rice last night too and it was delish! I am not a big fan of brown rice, I think it’s not really rice. I, of course, love the long grain basmati I grew up with.
The thing to do is talk to “Bob”, mention what the boss said, say you are sorry - did not intend to hurt his feelings, etc., BUT that you don’t understand why he felt that way. And maybe he could explain his thoughts on this a little so you can understand what happened a bit better.
Also note that some management INTENTIONALLY tries to cause conflict between workers. The theory behind this is “less talk, more work”. (If the workers are all mad at each other.)
Sorry for the tangent, but does basmati make good fried rice? We like Indian food and often only have basmati on hand, but I’ve been afraid to try using it to make fried rice since I’ve only used… well, whatever regular white rice is in the US.
I don’t care for brown rice, but I might like it better in fried rice than cooked normally.
At my first job, which was a good-sized consulting/outsourcing firm, had a very good approach to those misunderstandings that can arise from innocent comments (especially in email). They hammered at it on our very first day of new hire orientation: “Always give your co-workers benefit of the doubt. Always. We strive very hard to hire smart, hardworking, nice people. If someone says or writes something that offends you, your first thought should be ‘they probably didn’t mean that the way it sounded’ and ask them to clarify. Don’t assume they were being rude or mean; assume that you misunderstood them until you have other evidence. Benefit of the doubt.”
It was a good message and one of the most enjoyable places I’ve ever worked.
I think it does, but I would recommend you try it once and see. But admittedly, we cook it in the rice cooker first, so it cooks just perfectly and then we add in the eggs, etc.
This is brilliant. It’s kind of a small peeve I have when people go whining to the boss instead of coming to me directly if I’ve accidentally offended them.
I once made the mistake of handing a project to a micromanaging boss while saying “and here is (project) for your inspection” and got reamed for not saying “and here is (project) for your review” Things only went downhill very quickly from there.
It was probably a subconscious word choice reflecting her attitude towards my work, and it ended up proving the point…
Back when I was in public relations, one of the cardinal rules we tried to hammer into our clients’ heads was:
THEY DON’T KNOW YOU’RE JOKING!!!
It was difficult to get successful people to realize that answering a reporter’s stupid question with a sarcastic comment, or opening a speech with a lawyer joke was almost sure to offend someone, maybe everyone, and that if you want to tell a joke, make sure you are the butt of the joke.
This happened to me, sort of, and it was super annoying. One friend – who was the sort to always interpret my comments in the most bizarre possible way – told me that I had offended a mutual friend by ‘implying she wasn’t as smart (as us)’. I was bewildered how this could be the case, but I noticed over the next few months how very careful Offendi-Friend was around this mutual friend, always somewhat-condescendingly ‘including’ her in conversations that she was already in, and stuff like that.
A couple of years later I asked the mutual friend, whom I was now much closer to, if I had offended her and she just laughed and said that not only had I not offended her, but that Offendi-Friend had ‘apologized’ on my behalf, leading mutual friend to and forget about it!
She wasn’t asking for advice.
and forget about it!