2d ago

What's a colleague said that you wished you had?

Did someone give a bully a bollocking? Tell higher ups how bad things were? Say something truly hilarious?

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Not my story, but my mother's. We're Canadian, which is relevant to the story.
A few months ago she was at a large conference in the US for a very large multinational corp. During one of the talks being given, they brought out another Canadian speaker who addressed the fact that there were other Canadians in the crowd.
Behind her, she hears some guy shout "Our 51st State!"
She turns around to him, and very loud tells him "Oh fuck off, I'd rather be dead." He had quite a horrified look on his face.
Turns out he's one of the top Execs at the company. Fast forward to about a week ago, and guess who is visiting the Canadian offices? He received a very cold reception.

When I was very early in my career, fresh grad, first job, I wanted to be the "model Asian" that I'd been indoctrinated into by the society around me, and I was very much all about 水无常形，因器而变 (shuǐ wú cháng xíng, yīn qì ér biàn or "water has no constant shape; it changes according to the vessel"). So when I saw someone getting what I know now to be bullied in a meeting, my assumption was that this was the way things should be done; that was business. I changed my behaviour according to my vessel.
Thankfully I had someone with a stronger backbone than me in that meeting; someone also Asian (in his case Korean), but one who was further along the path of not putting up with that shit than I was at the time. He stood up in the meeting, walked over to the woman being bullied, and in a quiet voice (that thundered in my own ears) said, "This is a business not a playground. We are either professionals here, or you're down a head count of two."
See, while I was living according to one proverb, he was living according to a better one for the circumstance: 宁为玉碎，不为瓦全 (nìng wéi yù suì, bù wéi wǎ quán or "better to be a broken piece of jade than an intact piece of pottery"). In his mind there was nothing more shameful than standing by peacefully while a gross injustice was being done.
I really wish I'd had the courage to do that instead of him.
- That's a really powerful story thanks for sharing

Said go fuck yourself to CEO at a meeting with contractors, then said the same to the boss of the contractors, stormed out of the room, returned with a glass of cognac in five minutes and everyone pretended that nothing happened. It was so epic and hilarious and the funniest thing is both of the guys actually listened and ~~fucked themselves~~ did the right thing.
- What an absolute legend! What was the rooms reaction at the time?
  
  Well contractor's team was confused, our team was trying not to laugh to hard, and ceo was like "well, moving on ...". It was a startup that gotten too big fast, so people that were there from the start were friends before (and some of the smartest if shitty people that I've met), so things like that were not normal but tolerated.
  After meeting ended everyone was invited for a drink, so people had somethingn to say about it, it was to date one of the few meetings I've ever enjoyed.

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