In order to understand this post, you might want to read this one first :
Workplace Violence Just Doesn’t Work For Me
Quick recap: “Bobby” put me in a headlock from behind and threw me to the ground, crushing my throat. I didn’t (couldn’t) fight back since he took me by surprise. After a moment, he let go and we both jumped to our feet.
I haven’t been in a fight in years. I never expected to get attacked at work, so needless to say I was a little surprised. There was a large part of me that wanted to go caveman on this guy, and I wouldn’t bother with the neck area like he did. My dad taught me to target the nuts and the nose, to exclusion of all other areas.
As I prepared to rearrange his facial protuberances with a rapid application of fists, a glimmer of reason edged its way into my brain. I considered a flurry of blows to his dangly parts. Another fraction of a second passed, and I regretfully pushed thoughts of completely destroying and humiliating this idiot right out of my head. I walked around him towards my witnesses, I mean workers. I was by no means calm; every muscle in my body was quivering with adrenaline.
“Bobby” retreated about 100 feet away. No one knew what to say, so I asked in a shaky voice”Did everyone see that?” Everyone there said they caught the whole thing.
At this point, I realized that I had lost the battle, but won the war. I didn’t participate in a fight at work, which might have cost me my job. It would have been satisfying for a moment to punch his card, but our company might have lost a long term customer. Also, someone could have gotten hurt pretty bad if we really went at it. Mostly, he probably would have gotten hurt pretty bad.
I am the eternal optimist. So what did I gain out of all this?
I gained the respect of all my workers, since they knew I had a hard time standing down. They all stated that I was a bigger man than Bobby.
I gained my own respect. I didn’t know I had it in me to walk away from a fight.
But most importantly, I now own Bobby. Check out this post on Pwning Noobs for clarification.
You see, I didn’t bother reporting this incident to anyone but my boss. No one at Bobby’s company knows about this yet. I’m holding all the cards. This guy has been making life hard for weeks, but all that is over now. He has to watch what he does around my crew. He put his cards all out on the table, and I just walked away from the table and left him standing there. He would instantly lose his job of more than 20 years over this.
That’s right, things are going to be a lot easier at the job site. We can do our work in peace, and we won’t have to walk on eggshells just to keep Bobby happy.
After all, what’s he gonna do, beat me up?
One thing’s for sure, I won’t be giving him a Redneck Beer Gift Basket for Christmas.
There is a line in the movie “Pulp Fiction”, spoken by John Travolta’s character Vincent Vega; “They’ve got the same sh*t over there that we do, it’s just that over there it’s a little different.” I had occasion recently to travel down from Alberta into the U.S.A. and that is pretty much what I was thinking a lot of the time. For the most part I knew which differences to expect and yet they still surprised me a bit.