It's hard when you want to think the best of people, and then you encounter people who are not the best.
I ride the bus every day, and the unspoken rules of a bus are as follows: with pairs of seats on either side of the aisle, the first seating goal is to have one person at every window seat on the bus to not unnecessarily encroach on personal space. Then the aisle seats fill up based on judgments of who a non-issue seatmate would be, and when standing room is all that remains all boundaries of personal bubbles are popped by necessity.
Once when riding a bus to school on a Thursday afternoon, I had an encounter with one of the "not best" kind. Upon boarding the bus the seating situation was at stage one, so I found myself a window and pulled out my math homework for a quick review before my test. Stage two brought a friendly middle-aged black man into the aisle seat next to me. After a strange conversation that involved a lot of questions of my athletic history and more compliments than standard, I indicated my math homework and the conversation stopped. Distracted by my notes, I realized shortly before my stop that my seat didn't feel quite right. Shifting my weight and looking down, I realized his palm-down hand had been moved distinctly under my ass. He was looking away from me when I looked up with indignant surprise.
I lifted my weight from the seat, and moved to the aisle so I could get off the bus. Did I misconstrue that? Should I say something? Could that really have happened? Flustered and surprised, I said nothing. As I rang for my stop, he turned to me and said, "You really do have nice athletic legs." Disgusted and confused, I got off the bus post haste, not knowing what to do. Raised to be polite to others and having a mindset that perpetually tries to think the best of the strangers around me every day, I was not prepared to react to this new violation.
I was reminded of this today when I coworker warned me about our building manager. He's a middle-aged guy, foreign, and always stops at my desk to talk to me. The manner in which he would talk to me put up a small red flag in my mind, and then a coworker pulled me aside after he left and let me know of the advances he had previously made on other women in the office. In spite of the fact that he is married, all the women in the office are married, and one is a lesbian in a 20-year relationship, he had hit on them all with surprisingly bold comments that were absolutely offensive. My coworker finally got to a point where she simply had to tell him in similarly bold terms "Drop dead, you creep, married or not it would never happen." Which, to her smugness, ended up with a several month reprieve when he became suddenly scarce in the office. But the past three days he has been in the office inspecting windows and always makes it a point to come to my desk. If it came to a point of defending myself verbally, how and what would I say?
I was raised to be respectful to others and to say "yes" and to be deferential. Both of my parents have a hard time with handling conflict in their personal lives because of the tumultuous family situations they both came from as children. The respectful attitude toward others hammered into me from day one has helped me greatly with good people...but I wish I had been taught a little more about how to stand up and say "no" to the people in life who are not good.
I ride the bus every day, and the unspoken rules of a bus are as follows: with pairs of seats on either side of the aisle, the first seating goal is to have one person at every window seat on the bus to not unnecessarily encroach on personal space. Then the aisle seats fill up based on judgments of who a non-issue seatmate would be, and when standing room is all that remains all boundaries of personal bubbles are popped by necessity.
Once when riding a bus to school on a Thursday afternoon, I had an encounter with one of the "not best" kind. Upon boarding the bus the seating situation was at stage one, so I found myself a window and pulled out my math homework for a quick review before my test. Stage two brought a friendly middle-aged black man into the aisle seat next to me. After a strange conversation that involved a lot of questions of my athletic history and more compliments than standard, I indicated my math homework and the conversation stopped. Distracted by my notes, I realized shortly before my stop that my seat didn't feel quite right. Shifting my weight and looking down, I realized his palm-down hand had been moved distinctly under my ass. He was looking away from me when I looked up with indignant surprise.
I lifted my weight from the seat, and moved to the aisle so I could get off the bus. Did I misconstrue that? Should I say something? Could that really have happened? Flustered and surprised, I said nothing. As I rang for my stop, he turned to me and said, "You really do have nice athletic legs." Disgusted and confused, I got off the bus post haste, not knowing what to do. Raised to be polite to others and having a mindset that perpetually tries to think the best of the strangers around me every day, I was not prepared to react to this new violation.
I was reminded of this today when I coworker warned me about our building manager. He's a middle-aged guy, foreign, and always stops at my desk to talk to me. The manner in which he would talk to me put up a small red flag in my mind, and then a coworker pulled me aside after he left and let me know of the advances he had previously made on other women in the office. In spite of the fact that he is married, all the women in the office are married, and one is a lesbian in a 20-year relationship, he had hit on them all with surprisingly bold comments that were absolutely offensive. My coworker finally got to a point where she simply had to tell him in similarly bold terms "Drop dead, you creep, married or not it would never happen." Which, to her smugness, ended up with a several month reprieve when he became suddenly scarce in the office. But the past three days he has been in the office inspecting windows and always makes it a point to come to my desk. If it came to a point of defending myself verbally, how and what would I say?
I was raised to be respectful to others and to say "yes" and to be deferential. Both of my parents have a hard time with handling conflict in their personal lives because of the tumultuous family situations they both came from as children. The respectful attitude toward others hammered into me from day one has helped me greatly with good people...but I wish I had been taught a little more about how to stand up and say "no" to the people in life who are not good.
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