I’d put the number somewhere around once or twice a week.
I think that number is too high, but there is little I can do about it. It seems to be a hazard of being an attorney.
The last insult came from an opposing party who told me my law firm was very hard to deal with and that I should pass that on to my boss.
It’s a little frustrating because I do not think I learned how to deal with insults. Until recently the preferred method was to curse people out in my best Brooklyn accent and to narrowly avoid violence. Now that I’m all grown up, I’ve upgraded to the “ignore them and take it” method, which keeps me out of trouble and not looking like a Neanderthal, but has the side effect of countless hours of sleep loss due to over thinking past insults.
I’m just wondering if anyone hear has a similar experience at work.
I’m not sure how " your law firm is hard to deal with" is an insult. But then again I’m a public librarian and I get real insults at work.
Of course I can’t remember any good ones off the top of my head now, but I do recall a half-Southeast Asian colleague being pissed as hell at being called a “white bitch”, mostly at the white part.
My boss thinks I’m a dumbass, but he thinks everyone who works for him is a dumbass, so I’m not even sure I feel particularly offended. I mean, if he gives you the impression that he thinks you’re a dumbass, all it really means is “Sir, you are currently in my employ.”
My old Chief of Staff used to come in and rant and rave that we were all dog shit stupid and tell my to get my f***ing head out of my ass. Then he would come around about ten minutes later an apologize.
He did it to everyone, but he really only apologized to me, since I was the only female officer on his staff.
She’s an adversary. We’re not supposed to help her (she has her own lawyer). She’s not even supposed to talk to us directly.
I don’t want to get into explaining the entire context of the comment. I just didn’t like it and it’s entirely possible I’m blowing it out of proportion.
I can only remember one example. It was my first job out of college and at one point my boss called me a retard before storming out of the room. Seriously it’s one of my big regrets in life that I didn’t kick the shit out of the guy.
Generally it’s rare that I get insulted at work. But in the past week it’s happened a whole bunch of times because I’ve had the bad luck of being dragged into meetings with my boss’ boss, who is an ass. The example that jumps to mind was when she was spewing out a rapid fire stream of nonsense and paused to say, “Am I making sense? Are you following this? Well, I know I’m making sense, but are you following?” Uh, no, you’re actually not making sense, because you’re a fucking salesperson and not an information security professional like the rest of us in the conversation.
A few years ago, I would have mouthed off in response. But now I have two children who prefer having a roof over their heads to being out in the cold, so I bit my tongue. Luckily this was a phone meeting, so she couldn’t see the expression on my face.
C’mon! Successful litigators are snarly as hell with thick hides and monstrous egos! If your personality isn’t like that, better move into Real Estate law or some other humdrum legal career in a small town.
My old boss once sent someone else in to give me some training. The boss said to the guy, “Do like that Vulcan mind-meld, and shove everything you know into Trinopus’ mind. But for God’s sake don’t let ANY information flow the other way!”
If you take that as an insult, then you are indeed a very special and previous flower.
The last time I was insulted was many years ago, when a co-worker said I was a fucking idiot. I very quietly informed her that she would never speak to me that way again. She never did.
Nurses are insulted almost daily. “You’re a bitch, you don’t know what you are doing, you’re mean, you just like to hurt people.” We are frequently called names also. My most memorable is “stinking old c___.” This is by patients, the people we are trying to help.
The problem with this method is - what if the person takes up the challenge, so to speak, and promptly repeats the insult they were told *not *to? What can you do?
“F—ing idiot!”
“You are never speak to me that way again, do you understand?”
It was the right approach for the situation, she held a senior role and I was moving up quickly so she probably felt threatened and was seeing if she could break my confidence. If it had been a different situation, I would have taken a different approach.
