Comment by jeromegv
18 hours ago
Yes we have real problems, and this one isn't and it takes 1 minute to solve. "Okay thank you, will change it for next time".
18 hours ago
Yes we have real problems, and this one isn't and it takes 1 minute to solve. "Okay thank you, will change it for next time".
Why spend even one minute "solving" a non-problem? What would even qualify as a solution to a non-problem? Or maybe it's a problem, just not a real problem, although if a problem is imaginary, surely the solution can be too.
It can be a problem. If someone doesn't like people taking calls at their desk because it interrupts them, they might ask their peers not to do that. If someone has a dislike for a food, they might ask their friends to not go to a type of restaurant. If someone has particular nickname preferences (Will vs Bill) they might share those.
People deliberately choosing not to try to honor those preferences are making a choice with a small impact. No one is claiming it's a big deal. But honoring preferences can make people feel unhappy.
As can honoring a preference that you find silly.
It turns out, this is pretty simple human negotiation stuff -- we can all express a preference and we can all choose to not honor it. And we have to be comfortable with the idea someone might think less of someone else a little bit as a result.
I'm all for reasonably accommodating reasonable preferences. A nickname preference for example is common and fairly easy to accommodate. The more bizarre and unreasonable your preferences are though the less likely people are going to be to accommodate them, especially if those people aren't very close to you. Even people who do go through the trouble to accommodate someone's strange or burdensome preference might think less of them a little bit.
"I interpret a commonly used word or phrase as meaning something other than what the dictionary says that it means, and differently from what pretty much everyone, for hundreds of years, has intended it to mean when they say it, and so every time I hear it used by anyone that makes me unhappy so please stop using that word or phrase around me" is a pretty strange request that some people might find a bit unreasonable. At least it might not be too hard for some to constantly remember to alter their vocabulary around specific people.
In terms of human negotiation, part of working in a professional environment, or any large group of mixed company, involves understanding that you may not have your every preference catered to and that for some preferences it can even be impolite to impose on the group by asking them to take your weird hang up into account. The strength/impact of the preference, the size of the group and how well you all know each other will have to factor into that though.
I suspect that "I'll just try to remember and understand that people who say 'you guys' use it to mean what the dictionary says that it means" is a more reasonable position than "Every one of the 200,000+ people who work for the same company that I work for should alter their vocabulary to accommodate my personal preference because I want to cling to a non-standard definition of that particular phrase and I'll judge anyone who refuses to comply"
7 replies →
This is not about personal accommodations, though? Usually its coming from people who are supposedly trying to enforce this stuff to “protect” broader groups of people who they perceive need saving or just engaging in general virtue signaling.
It takes less than that.
“I’m not going to do that. Moving on.”
People are down voting you for this, but like, I'd rather have that honesty. I know where I stand with you when you do that.
Everyone is out here thinking I'm policing, correcting, eradicating, or some other verbing. When really I'm asking you to inconvenience yourself to stop inconveniencing me.
You are well within your rights to be like, "no". I don't understand this compulsion to make either party into some villain.
> I don't understand this compulsion to make either party into some villain.
If someone replies as the GP suggested, they will be villainized by some subset of the people who hear that reply. In a professional setting, that could involve a visit from HR and/or be a career-limiting move, depending on the company culture.
It doesn't matter if you understand it or not. It happens, and that's what matters.
> Yes we have real problems, and this one isn't
Yes.
> solve
No that's not solving anything.