06/26/02: Taking A Stand

juju · 06-26-2002, 01:50 PM

What I wanted to talk about today is upsetting your life or social situation soley on the basis of your own moral values. There was an Oprah show on last week on this very topic. I thought it was a very good show, although I don't think they gave as good examples as they could have.

So, are you willing to do it, and to what extent? I'm reminded of Jeffrey Weigand and Coleen Rowley, both of whom risked everything just to say, "No, that is not right.".

Here's an example of when i've done this.

Several years ago, I worked at a movie theater. It sucked. The store manager was a tyrant and treated the employees like crap. The theater had hired janitors to come in at night after everyone was gone and clean the theaters. They seemed to have a great job. They only worked a couple hours each night, and they were the only ones in the theater while they were there.

Well, eventually I learned that the regular employees were mad at them because they had been smoking pot on the roof at night. The day employees started to hate the janitors. There may be more to the reason why they hated them, i'm not sure.

One night, as we were closing one night a bunch of employees went into each theater, armed with huge trashbags full of popcorn, and lots of full soda cups. The bags of popcorn were strewn about the theater floor, and the cokes were thrown like footballs as far across the theater as was possible. The entire floor was covered in crap, and whenever the cokes would hit the seats they would burst open in a great display. It's amazing how much you can trash a theater given the opportunity. I wish I had pictures.

They encouraged me to join them the entire time. "It's fun!" they would say to convince me. But I just stood there and watched them.

Finally we all left, and the theater was locked up. Several hours later I came to the decision to go back and tell the janitors. This made me incredibly nervous, since it's unusual for anyone but the janitors to show up after 1am. I would have no opportunity to back out once I was there, since I had no excuse to be there.

Anyway, I told them what had been done, and who had done what. Some of the names were quite surprising to them, as some of the people who did this were seemingly very nice people.

The janitors thanked me profusely for telling them, and stated repeatedly that if I ever needed anything just to give them a call. I got the feeling they could have hooked me up with any kind of drugs I wanted. They said they had contacts with the police and that if I ever wanted out of a jam to just let them know.

They next day when I went into work it was chaos. The janitors had shown up and were yelling at the managers saying they had "proof". There were several managers involed in the act, and I don't think the store manager would even have cared. But the district manager was called on the phone to deal with the crisis, and I had to tell him what I had seen. Then I had to work with the people I had just told on. One of the guys didn't hold it against me. I guess he understood. The others continued to hate me for the rest of the time I was there.

I don't mean to say I was great for doing this. I actually felt terribly nervous throughout the whole thing. It felt sort of like bitch-slapping the Pope in front of a crowd of millions. You know it's socially forbidden, and yet you know you have the ability to do it anyway.

So, I don't think it's right to do that to a person. If you have a complaint with something they're doing, you should go through the proper channels. Don't make them clean up crap for an extra four hours. Their job is shitty enough as it is.

So, do any of you have any stories like this?

06-26-2002, 02:30 PM

Well, there are two questions you have to ask yourself before you do anything like this. They are:

"What is it that I really want out of this?"

and

"What am I willing to live with?"

There is an employee here at work that cheats on his timecard. It's illegal, and he knows it. It's also morally wrong. I feel as though I should bring it up with my boss. It's also exceptionally difficult for me to do so. I know that it's the right thing to do, but am I willing to live with getting someone fired? I don't know, and it's a tough question to answer. I should go to my boss, and I probably will... but it's difficult.

There was also an issue at school a few years back. My sister and I went to school in Carroll County, Maryland. It's not filled with hicks, and it's getting better... but back then, it was pretty tough to be different at all.

I was pretty different, but not so much that I was harrassed daily. I had long hair and only one eye, so I was on the receiving end of a number of derogatory marks... but nothing like my sister had to deal with.

Jen went through a number of phases in high school. One can only guess that she was trying to find herself. She wasn't what you would call a "trendhopper"... it's probably most accurate to say that she changed a lot while going through high school.

Well, throughout much of her freshman, sophomore and junior years, she was into wearing all black... Marilyn Manson shirts... lots of face makeup. Not what we called a "Manson kiddie" but not in the "in" crowd either.

She was constantly harrassed. Spit on. Called names every day. All because she was different.

I decided one day to wear my hair in pony tails. Thursday, December 3, 1998. About a third of the way into my senior year.

From the moment I got to school, I started hearing it. "Fucking faggot." "Queer." "He looks like a fucking girl." "Homo."

I arrived to my first class about 5 minutes late, namely because the teacher had asked me to do something and I had agreed. As I entered the classroom, it erupted with laughter. Pony tails are the funniest thing, apparently. It took a good minute for the laughter to die down. I sat at my desk and the girl beside me asked "Why did you wear your hair like that?" My teacher seconded the question - "Yeah, David. Why?"

My reply went mostly like this:

"Because we, as a society, have a tendency to laugh at and make fun of and ostracize those who are different. We poke fun at those who are unconventional. You all ridicule the rednecks for being racist, but you're no better. You're no better. You walk down the hallway and laugh at the special-ed student, but you're no better than they are. You're no better. You laughed at me when I walked into this room. Why? Because I'm different. My sister is different. She's unconventional. She doesn't "fit in". She's been laughed at and pointed at and spit on. We sit back and encourage that by laughing along with them. But we are no better. We are no better. I did this for everyone who's been laughed at or made fun of or killed for being different. I did this for my sister."

Of course, that pretty well shut them up. For the rest of the day, I answered the "Why did you wear your hair like that?" with "Why do you wear your hair like that?" and it seemed to work pretty well. A few days later, one of the girls in my first class came to me and said "You know, I went home last week and cried after I thought about what you said. You were right... and I don't think I'll ever be able to make fun of someone because they're different again. Thank you."

Vicky is one of two people from high school that I still talk to.

juju · 06-26-2002, 06:03 PM

Wow.. that's a hell of a story. I not sure I would have been brave enough to do that in high school. Of course.. I was a different person back then. Less self-confident. And I didn't grow my hair out until several years after I got out. That definitely took balls, though.

As to the timecard thing, if it were me, I would threaten to tell the boss unless he stopped. I probably wouldn't actually go to the boss, but the threat itself should be enough. Either that, or he'll start hiding it from you.

elSicomoro · 06-26-2002, 08:55 PM

My story isn't really about right or wrong; it's more about principle.

I used to work for a company called OCM (now owned by Student Advantage) when I lived in Maryland. As a whole, OCM was pretty good--3 weeks of vacation your first year, and free health insurance. The job wasn't too bad, but...

Each year, if the company met its goals (which it generally did), the company (about 70 people total at the time) was taken on a 4-day trip to someplace nice 2 weeks before Christmas...all expenses (food, drink, everything) were paid for by the company. The year I worked there (1999), they went to the Turks and Caicos Islands. No wives, husbands, or s.o.'s were allowed, just company employees.

The trip sounded all well and good, except for that last sentence. The way I saw it, why the hell would I want to go out of the country for 4 days with people that I already spend 40 hours a week with? No offense to those that were cool with it; I just wasn't digging it.

Well, my boss simply didn't seem to understand it, nor did other employees...I don't know what exactly they were thinking, but apparently, it ranged from people thinking I was silly to others thinking I was being a snob. From there on out, I got harrassed, primarily about everything BUT that (the fact that I was from Missouri, my hair, etc.). It started out good-naturedly, but started getting old after a while...to the point where fisticuffs almost broke out after I asked people to stop several times, and they wouldn't. From the minute I decided against going on the trip, and explained my rationale, I was no longer part of the "in" crowd. It seemed like I would get in trouble at the slightest thing, while others had a longer leash. My boss and I wound up clashing over almost everything for the next year.

In the end, it became a mess, and I wound up unemployed a month after I moved to Philadelphia. But I don't regret opening my mouth at that company. I didn't want to go on that trip, I made my decision, I stood by it, I explained it as best as possible, and that's it. If anyone didn't get it beyond there, I couldn't help them. Unfortunately, some people want to be team players at all costs. I'm all for being a team player, but sometimes, you have to be the dissenting voice. And when you accomplish this with the greatest of tact, it drives those against you insane. :)

juju · 06-28-2002, 12:01 AM

It seems that if you don't try to merge with whatever culture thrives at your workplace, you'll have a harder time there.

I discovered this at my current job. When I first started, it was a bunch of country boys. You know the sort of guys that insult each other all day as sort of a bonding thing? They were like that.

I don't mind that, but I wasn't used to it. I didn't know how to respond, so I would just stare blankly at them. Then they would have to remind me that they were just joking. It's hard to get used to people insulting you all the time. Eventually I found the groove, though, and I now can do it with the best of them.

But anyway, it seems it's not enough to just do your job well. You've got to keep an eye on the culture, too. Not sure if it's a good thing or not, but it seems to be the way it is.

elSicomoro · 06-29-2002, 03:59 PM

What about taking a stand against your parents? I have had to battle my parents on interracial dating (see juju's Being a Kid thread), anything involving the military or the US flag (my stepdad's a Vietnam vet), and relocating out of St. Louis.

It's always been tough for me to go against them...it sort of feels like I'm betraying them. But at the same time, I've grown up under different circumstances than them, had the opportunity to further my education, and just have a different mindset than they do. The way I see it, if you can't stand up against your parents, you'll live in fear of them. And while I respect my parents and love them to death, I will NOT fear them.

MaggieL · 06-29-2002, 05:59 PM

I suppose I should say something here, but I'm not really sure where to start. "Dressing goth" and "wearing ponytails" undoubtedly represent rebellion against the norms on some level...but at this point, sneaking up on five years since my gender transition, and three and a half since the reassignment surgery, I'm a little burned out along those lines.

Both my transition and surgery were rather more public than many people in this journey face, since I stayed working at the same job at the same company throughout. So there was a fair amount of social stress involved in that whole thing.

I suppose it would have been a 'way bigger mess had I still been in high school at the time, since the pressure to conform is so much greater then. I do know that my elder daughter has been a lot more comfortable being around me now that she's in college, and in fact her friends seem to find me quaint and vaguely interesting rather than an anathema against nature.

Whatever ostracization I might have experienced at work seems to have been mostly quashed by respect for how good I was at my job...plus a possible fear of a sexual harassment lawsuit, which certainly would at the very least have been breaking new legal ground.

Occasionally, people express respect for "how much courage I must have had", which always leaves me feeling kind of funny. I mean, jumping out of an airplane skydiving takes courage, jumping out of a *burning* airplane only requires a strong motivation to survive, and "Maggie's Excellent Wisconsin Vacation"[1] always seemed to me more like the latter than the former[2]. I guess that deprives me of any claim to the 'moral high ground'; to the extent that this wasn't really a *principled* stand, just a necessary one.

Still, it was a pretty serious leap of faith. I know the "conventional wisdom" is that transsexual women (I'll speak of TS wormen for grammatical convenience) all "always knew they were women" and felt like "women trapped in the body of a man". That level of insight may be more common to folks of later generations, or perhaps those ideas were promulgated from reading Christine Jorgensen's autobiography. All *I* know is that at the beginning it was *far* from clear to me "exactly what was wrong". I certainly didn't want to accept even the possibility much less the fact for a long, long time...mostly because I knew admmitting it would wreak havok on my family. Which it did.

These days I really identify with Ellie Arroway in the movie version of "Contact", first repeating "OK to go!' into the intercom while strapped in that intesely vibrating capsule about to be dropped into a total unknown, and then afterwards standing up in front of a Congressional comittee, bearing witness to experiences she can't even quite *describe*, much less explain or prove, asking the world to accept her account "on faith".

It was a lot like that.

OK, the boys can all un-cross their legs now. :-)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]-The reassignment surgery (That's the P.C. term for "sex-change") was done at a hospital in Wisconsin, where the surgeon practiced. There's about half-a-dozen surgeons who do this work in North America, and maybe three I'd consider seriously. A old friend of mine just had her's done this past Thursday, so I guess this stuff is kind of sitting very close to the surface of my mind today.

[2]-Except that it cost a hell of a lot more...health insurance companies will laugh at you if you seek reimbursement for the $13,000 that this care costs.

juju · 06-29-2002, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by sycamore
What about taking a stand against your parents? I have had to battle my parents on interracial dating (see juju's Being a Kid thread), anything involving the military or the US flag (my stepdad's a Vietnam vet), and relocating out of St. Louis.

It's always been tough for me to go against them...it sort of feels like I'm betraying them. But at the same time, I've grown up under different circumstances than them, had the opportunity to further my education, and just have a different mindset than they do. The way I see it, if you can't stand up against your parents, you'll live in fear of them. And while I respect my parents and love them to death, I will NOT fear them.

I judge people based on their actions. Parents get no special treatment. If they treat me well, I will respect their ideas and be good to them. If they shit on me, fuck them! I won't take anyone's shit soley based on genetics. I'm sure this sounds cold, but it's just logic. I do respect and love my mom, but only because she has been very good to me. She did a very good job raising me. I respect her because of this -- not just because "she's my mom".

Nic Name · 06-29-2002, 10:19 PM

That's great.

But like the R-E-S-P-E-C-T thread discussion, there still is confusion about that concept.

If people treat you well, you'll respect their ideas and be good to them. ???

With respect ... what the heck is that all about. :)

juju · 06-29-2002, 10:33 PM

I'll define it as having a high opinion of someone. As in giving credence to their thoughts because you think highly of them. As in, I respect Albert Einstein's mathematical abilities.

06-26-2002, 01:50 PM	#1
juju no one of consequence Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 2,839	06/26/02: Taking A Stand What I wanted to talk about today is upsetting your life or social situation soley on the basis of your own moral values. There was an Oprah show on last week on this very topic. I thought it was a very good show, although I don't think they gave as good examples as they could have. So, are you willing to do it, and to what extent? I'm reminded of Jeffrey Weigand and Coleen Rowley, both of whom risked everything just to say, "No, that is not right.". Here's an example of when i've done this. Several years ago, I worked at a movie theater. It sucked. The store manager was a tyrant and treated the employees like crap. The theater had hired janitors to come in at night after everyone was gone and clean the theaters. They seemed to have a great job. They only worked a couple hours each night, and they were the only ones in the theater while they were there. Well, eventually I learned that the regular employees were mad at them because they had been smoking pot on the roof at night. The day employees started to hate the janitors. There may be more to the reason why they hated them, i'm not sure. One night, as we were closing one night a bunch of employees went into each theater, armed with huge trashbags full of popcorn, and lots of full soda cups. The bags of popcorn were strewn about the theater floor, and the cokes were thrown like footballs as far across the theater as was possible. The entire floor was covered in crap, and whenever the cokes would hit the seats they would burst open in a great display. It's amazing how much you can trash a theater given the opportunity. I wish I had pictures. They encouraged me to join them the entire time. "It's fun!" they would say to convince me. But I just stood there and watched them. Finally we all left, and the theater was locked up. Several hours later I came to the decision to go back and tell the janitors. This made me incredibly nervous, since it's unusual for anyone but the janitors to show up after 1am. I would have no opportunity to back out once I was there, since I had no excuse to be there. Anyway, I told them what had been done, and who had done what. Some of the names were quite surprising to them, as some of the people who did this were seemingly very nice people. The janitors thanked me profusely for telling them, and stated repeatedly that if I ever needed anything just to give them a call. I got the feeling they could have hooked me up with any kind of drugs I wanted. They said they had contacts with the police and that if I ever wanted out of a jam to just let them know. They next day when I went into work it was chaos. The janitors had shown up and were yelling at the managers saying they had "proof". There were several managers involed in the act, and I don't think the store manager would even have cared. But the district manager was called on the phone to deal with the crisis, and I had to tell him what I had seen. Then I had to work with the people I had just told on. One of the guys didn't hold it against me. I guess he understood. The others continued to hate me for the rest of the time I was there. I don't mean to say I was great for doing this. I actually felt terribly nervous throughout the whole thing. It felt sort of like bitch-slapping the Pope in front of a crowd of millions. You know it's socially forbidden, and yet you know you have the ability to do it anyway. So, I don't think it's right to do that to a person. If you have a complaint with something they're doing, you should go through the proper channels. Don't make them clean up crap for an extra four hours. Their job is shitty enough as it is. So, do any of you have any stories like this? Last edited by juju; 06-26-2002 at 02:00 PM.

06-26-2002, 08:55 PM	#4
elSicomoro Person who doesn't update the user title Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 12,486	My story isn't really about right or wrong; it's more about principle. I used to work for a company called OCM (now owned by Student Advantage) when I lived in Maryland. As a whole, OCM was pretty good--3 weeks of vacation your first year, and free health insurance. The job wasn't too bad, but... Each year, if the company met its goals (which it generally did), the company (about 70 people total at the time) was taken on a 4-day trip to someplace nice 2 weeks before Christmas...all expenses (food, drink, everything) were paid for by the company. The year I worked there (1999), they went to the Turks and Caicos Islands. No wives, husbands, or s.o.'s were allowed, just company employees. The trip sounded all well and good, except for that last sentence. The way I saw it, why the hell would I want to go out of the country for 4 days with people that I already spend 40 hours a week with? No offense to those that were cool with it; I just wasn't digging it. Well, my boss simply didn't seem to understand it, nor did other employees...I don't know what exactly they were thinking, but apparently, it ranged from people thinking I was silly to others thinking I was being a snob. From there on out, I got harrassed, primarily about everything BUT that (the fact that I was from Missouri, my hair, etc.). It started out good-naturedly, but started getting old after a while...to the point where fisticuffs almost broke out after I asked people to stop several times, and they wouldn't. From the minute I decided against going on the trip, and explained my rationale, I was no longer part of the "in" crowd. It seemed like I would get in trouble at the slightest thing, while others had a longer leash. My boss and I wound up clashing over almost everything for the next year. In the end, it became a mess, and I wound up unemployed a month after I moved to Philadelphia. But I don't regret opening my mouth at that company. I didn't want to go on that trip, I made my decision, I stood by it, I explained it as best as possible, and that's it. If anyone didn't get it beyond there, I couldn't help them. Unfortunately, some people want to be team players at all costs. I'm all for being a team player, but sometimes, you have to be the dissenting voice. And when you accomplish this with the greatest of tact, it drives those against you insane. :) Last edited by elSicomoro; 06-26-2002 at 08:57 PM.

06-28-2002, 12:01 AM	#5
juju no one of consequence Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 2,839	It seems that if you don't try to merge with whatever culture thrives at your workplace, you'll have a harder time there. I discovered this at my current job. When I first started, it was a bunch of country boys. You know the sort of guys that insult each other all day as sort of a bonding thing? They were like that. I don't mind that, but I wasn't used to it. I didn't know how to respond, so I would just stare blankly at them. Then they would have to remind me that they were just joking. It's hard to get used to people insulting you all the time. Eventually I found the groove, though, and I now can do it with the best of them. But anyway, it seems it's not enough to just do your job well. You've got to keep an eye on the culture, too. Not sure if it's a good thing or not, but it seems to be the way it is. Last edited by juju; 06-28-2002 at 12:04 AM.

06-29-2002, 05:59 PM	#7
MaggieL in the Hour of Scampering Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Jeffersonville PA (15 mi NW of Philadelphia) Posts: 4,060	I suppose I should say something here, but I'm not really sure where to start. "Dressing goth" and "wearing ponytails" undoubtedly represent rebellion against the norms on some level...but at this point, sneaking up on five years since my gender transition, and three and a half since the reassignment surgery, I'm a little burned out along those lines. Both my transition and surgery were rather more public than many people in this journey face, since I stayed working at the same job at the same company throughout. So there was a fair amount of social stress involved in that whole thing. I suppose it would have been a 'way bigger mess had I still been in high school at the time, since the pressure to conform is so much greater then. I do know that my elder daughter has been a lot more comfortable being around me now that she's in college, and in fact her friends seem to find me quaint and vaguely interesting rather than an anathema against nature. Whatever ostracization I might have experienced at work seems to have been mostly quashed by respect for how good I was at my job...plus a possible fear of a sexual harassment lawsuit, which certainly would at the very least have been breaking new legal ground. Occasionally, people express respect for "how much courage I must have had", which always leaves me feeling kind of funny. I mean, jumping out of an airplane skydiving takes courage, jumping out of a burning airplane only requires a strong motivation to survive, and "Maggie's Excellent Wisconsin Vacation"[1] always seemed to me more like the latter than the former[2]. I guess that deprives me of any claim to the 'moral high ground'; to the extent that this wasn't really a principled stand, just a necessary one. Still, it was a pretty serious leap of faith. I know the "conventional wisdom" is that transsexual women (I'll speak of TS wormen for grammatical convenience) all "always knew they were women" and felt like "women trapped in the body of a man". That level of insight may be more common to folks of later generations, or perhaps those ideas were promulgated from reading Christine Jorgensen's autobiography. All I know is that at the beginning it was far from clear to me "exactly what was wrong". I certainly didn't want to accept even the possibility much less the fact for a long, long time...mostly because I knew admmitting it would wreak havok on my family. Which it did. These days I really identify with Ellie Arroway in the movie version of "Contact", first repeating "OK to go!' into the intercom while strapped in that intesely vibrating capsule about to be dropped into a total unknown, and then afterwards standing up in front of a Congressional comittee, bearing witness to experiences she can't even quite describe, much less explain or prove, asking the world to accept her account "on faith". It was a lot like that. OK, the boys can all un-cross their legs now. :-) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1]-The reassignment surgery (That's the P.C. term for "sex-change") was done at a hospital in Wisconsin, where the surgeon practiced. There's about half-a-dozen surgeons who do this work in North America, and maybe three I'd consider seriously. A old friend of mine just had her's done this past Thursday, so I guess this stuff is kind of sitting very close to the surface of my mind today. [2]-Except that it cost a hell of a lot more...health insurance companies will laugh at you if you seek reimbursement for the $13,000 that this care costs. __________________ "Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune,whose words do jarre; nor his reason In frame, whose sentence is preposterous..."

06-26-2002, 02:30 PM	#2
dave Guest Posts: n/a	Well, there are two questions you have to ask yourself before you do anything like this. They are: "What is it that I really want out of this?" and "What am I willing to live with?" There is an employee here at work that cheats on his timecard. It's illegal, and he knows it. It's also morally wrong. I feel as though I should bring it up with my boss. It's also exceptionally difficult for me to do so. I know that it's the right thing to do, but am I willing to live with getting someone fired? I don't know, and it's a tough question to answer. I should go to my boss, and I probably will... but it's difficult. There was also an issue at school a few years back. My sister and I went to school in Carroll County, Maryland. It's not filled with hicks, and it's getting better... but back then, it was pretty tough to be different at all. I was pretty different, but not so much that I was harrassed daily. I had long hair and only one eye, so I was on the receiving end of a number of derogatory marks... but nothing like my sister had to deal with. Jen went through a number of phases in high school. One can only guess that she was trying to find herself. She wasn't what you would call a "trendhopper"... it's probably most accurate to say that she changed a lot while going through high school. Well, throughout much of her freshman, sophomore and junior years, she was into wearing all black... Marilyn Manson shirts... lots of face makeup. Not what we called a "Manson kiddie" but not in the "in" crowd either. She was constantly harrassed. Spit on. Called names every day. All because she was different. I decided one day to wear my hair in pony tails. Thursday, December 3, 1998. About a third of the way into my senior year. From the moment I got to school, I started hearing it. "Fucking faggot." "Queer." "He looks like a fucking girl." "Homo." I arrived to my first class about 5 minutes late, namely because the teacher had asked me to do something and I had agreed. As I entered the classroom, it erupted with laughter. Pony tails are the funniest thing, apparently. It took a good minute for the laughter to die down. I sat at my desk and the girl beside me asked "Why did you wear your hair like that?" My teacher seconded the question - "Yeah, David. Why?" My reply went mostly like this: "Because we, as a society, have a tendency to laugh at and make fun of and ostracize those who are different. We poke fun at those who are unconventional. You all ridicule the rednecks for being racist, but you're no better. You're no better. You walk down the hallway and laugh at the special-ed student, but you're no better than they are. You're no better. You laughed at me when I walked into this room. Why? Because I'm different. My sister is different. She's unconventional. She doesn't "fit in". She's been laughed at and pointed at and spit on. We sit back and encourage that by laughing along with them. But we are no better. We are no better. I did this for everyone who's been laughed at or made fun of or killed for being different. I did this for my sister." Of course, that pretty well shut them up. For the rest of the day, I answered the "Why did you wear your hair like that?" with "Why do you wear your hair like that?" and it seemed to work pretty well. A few days later, one of the girls in my first class came to me and said "You know, I went home last week and cried after I thought about what you said. You were right... and I don't think I'll ever be able to make fun of someone because they're different again. Thank you." Vicky is one of two people from high school that I still talk to.

06-26-2002, 06:03 PM	#3
juju no one of consequence Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 2,839	Wow.. that's a hell of a story. I not sure I would have been brave enough to do that in high school. Of course.. I was a different person back then. Less self-confident. And I didn't grow my hair out until several years after I got out. That definitely took balls, though. As to the timecard thing, if it were me, I would threaten to tell the boss unless he stopped. I probably wouldn't actually go to the boss, but the threat itself should be enough. Either that, or he'll start hiding it from you.

06-29-2002, 03:59 PM	#6
elSicomoro Person who doesn't update the user title Join Date: Jan 2001 Posts: 12,486	What about taking a stand against your parents? I have had to battle my parents on interracial dating (see juju's Being a Kid thread), anything involving the military or the US flag (my stepdad's a Vietnam vet), and relocating out of St. Louis. It's always been tough for me to go against them...it sort of feels like I'm betraying them. But at the same time, I've grown up under different circumstances than them, had the opportunity to further my education, and just have a different mindset than they do. The way I see it, if you can't stand up against your parents, you'll live in fear of them. And while I respect my parents and love them to death, I will NOT fear them.

06-29-2002, 10:19 PM	#9
Nic Name retired Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 1,930	That's great. But like the R-E-S-P-E-C-T thread discussion, there still is confusion about that concept. If people treat you well, you'll respect their ideas and be good to them. ??? With respect ... what the heck is that all about. :)

06-29-2002, 10:33 PM	#10
juju no one of consequence Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Arkansas Posts: 2,839	I'll define it as having a high opinion of someone. As in giving credence to their thoughts because you think highly of them. As in, I respect Albert Einstein's mathematical abilities.

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