NOTE: I initially posted this last night. Unfortunately, I decided to listen to the meeting recording. After it was over, I decided “I’m more pissed off than this,” and so the post got longer and angrier. Then I listened to the meeting again, and once again decided “I’m more pissed off than this,” and so the post got longer and angrier still. Repeat. Growl angrily. Repeat. Growl angrily. Post. An hour later, realize that you probably went a little over the top and mark post as draft until morning. So here’s what I hope to be the last installment in this unhappy series. With any luck, I won’t get pissed off as I read this and I’ll actually be able to tone it down a tad…
Alright, lots of you have been asking what happened with my meeting today. For those of you with short attention spans, I can pretty much sum it up in one sentence. The gist of the entire meeting was “We realize we can’t do anything to you, but it’d be really nice if you took down your post…” Only with more attitude and overtones of superiority. Anyone else notice a disturbing trend in personality types here?
I find it interesting that, having had so many incredibly cool instructors thus far, that I should hit a patch of such rude and egotistical people in a row.
Upon advice from my loyal readers, as well as common sense and legal advice, the first thing I did was inform the meeting attendees that I was going to record our meeting, and slapped my digital recorder down on the table. If nothing else, this lets me go back and pick apart our conversation for maximum blogging goodness!
Without going through the entire meeting line by line, there were a few things I thought deserved commenting on, and which may be interesting to others as well as myself.
First, Bob was totally silent throughout the entire meeting, which I found more than a little odd… It’s really for the best at this point, because I have no desire to further insult him or hurt his feelings. This entire issue is now about my legal right to say anything I like here on my blog and the fact that certain people have tried to rob me of that right through various means. I do plan on trying to grab Bob for a private conversation sometime on Wednesday and try to explain this to him and appologize. Honestly, if this were still simply about him, I’d have removed the original post last Wednesday when I wrote Part II of the series.
Secondly, Rene Sawyer was very polite, and I think she would be more than happy to sit down and talk with anyone facing this kind of situation in the future. Had I actually met her previously (or known that someone in her capacity actually existed at all), I probably would have been willing to at least entertain the idea of having a talk with her instead of, or at least before, posting. She seemed to be genuinely interested in the problem, and like she was actually looking for resolution, rather than simply “making it go away”. I can’t recommend her highly enough. Thank you, Rene!
Next, I really think this entire issue has been blown way out of proportion. I’m sure people like Robert Scoble and Mark Jen can more than attest that you’re going to get called things you don’t appreciate at one time or another. Whether you think they’re warranted or not, you have to learn to roll with the punches and take everything with a grain of salt. When you’re in a position that groups of people (whether bloggers or students) look up to you for advice / leadership / cookies / gold stars / etc., you’re bound to make a few people unhappy. That’s the way of the world. Taking criticism, of any kind, is one of the things you have to live with. If you’re going to fall apart and go into a hissy fit every time you get called a name, you’re going to be wasting a lot of time in life. No matter how hard you try, everyone isn’t going to love you, and you just have to accept that and move on. God knows I have…
When it all comes down to it, the real issue Kim had with my post was the profanity I used. Apparently, had I mentioned Bob’s name without profanity, or used profanity without mentioning him by name, all would have been well. I tried to explain that, to me, profanity is nothing more than another form of emphasis and expression. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these words… It’s simply the negative connotations society has, for one reason or another, chosen to associate with these words which make them “evil”.
Personally, I swear like a sailor. Calling someone an asshole is no different to me than calling them a “jerk” or a “meany pants”. If “asshole” is this horrible, I can only imagine how people would have reacted, had I called someone a cock sucker… I mean, come on. If you know me at all, you know I can do far worse than “asshole”. Hell, you can even say asshole on broadcast television, can’t you? We’re not even talking PG-13 here people… In any case, profanity was the killer. I even used the phrase “when the shit hits the fan” during the meeting, which was struck down immediately as unacceptable. At the time, since Kim was the one conducting the meeting, I placated and appologized. If it were to happen now that I’ve thought more about it, I’d tell him that I’ll talk any way I like. This wasn’t a “classroom”. I wasn’t there as a “student”, I was there as another adult - at their request. I was doing them a favor by bothering to show up and listen to what they had to say.
Which really brings me to my big problem throughout all of this: ego. I’m sick of being treated like a little snot-nosed punk that doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. I’ve been working at the same company for 4 years as of December 6th, and in that time I have seen a lot. One hell of a lot. I’ve gone from simple desktop hardware maintenance and installation to fully-fledged Systems Administration, Microsoft Exchange management and Cisco router configuration. All self-taught. If that’s not a fucking accomplishment, I don’t know what the hell is. Just because you’re 20+ years older than I am doesn’t mean you’re instantly qualified to look and talk down to me as if I’m fresh out of high school and trying to cause trouble.
You think I need to mature a little before I realize that I was wrong? That’s fine. You are most certainly entitled to your opinion. And if I think you need to mature a little before you can learn to have a civilized conversation with a student without trying to make them feel inferior, that is my opinion.
As I’ve said, this is a community technical college that has a massive continuing-education program. Half a dozen members of my current Cisco class (with 14 students total) are 30+. If one of them had walked in and sat down during that meeting, would you have been a jerk and tried to get them to cower away in fear? I seriously doubt it.
The attitudes I’ve experienced recently from those “in authority” have reminded me greatly of the attitudes of most of my less professional and less liked teachers in High School… I’ve graduated… When will you?
To move along, I did point out during the meeting that the series of posts that arose after this issue was originally brought up moved me from the 6th page of search results for Bob’s name (55th result to be precise), to the 2nd result. If there’s a better way to shoot yourself in the foot, I can’t think of it. We don’t like having this blogger bashing us, so we make it an issue, which gets him to blog more, which gets his bashing to be more visible to the public. Brilliant idea… Maybe it would have worked before, but we’re in Web 2.0 world now, and the old-school strong-arm approach isn’t going to work out like it used to.
Not only was I able to look up legal resources from around the world and determine my legal rights, but the strength and self-confidence they provided me allowed me to continue to blog about the issue and bring it to an even larger audience. Can you imagine what would have happened, had we actually gotten a lawyer involved? Let’s multiply this by a factor of 10… Can you imagine the bad publicity you’d have generated if I’d gotten a Cease and Desist order and made it on the front page of Slashdot? Cover-ups don’t work like they used to. It’s time to actually start focusing on fixing the problem, not trying to hide it instead.
Kim tried, unsucessfully, to convince me that I was proud that my additional blogging had moved me to the 2nd result. On the contrary. This has all been a very unnecessary headache to me, and it’s impeded into an already overflowing schedule. No, it doesn’t bother me at all. Hell, I wrote the original article, why would it bother me? It was more embarassing for your organization than it was for me personally. You are right on one point though. I am very opinionated about this. You’ve tried everything you can to convince me to remove the post. If we’re playing our stereotypical egotistical personalities here, when your superior point of authority in this equation insists that I do something against my will, what do you think my inferior rebellious academic personality is going to do? I’ll take “Resist like Hell” for 1000, Alex…
The bottom line here is this: The post stays. Not because I still hold any particular opinion of Bob. In fact, I’m considering removing his name entirely from the posts and apologizing in person. No, in fact, the reason it stays is becuase you’ve all been “jerks” about the entire situation. Either slap me with a cease and desist order or leave me alone. Further pressing the issue will only strengthen my resolve and provide me with more blogging material, not to mention risk legal action on my part. Thin ice? Oh, you have no idea…
In closing, I’d like to recommend that no one ever approach Kim Cannon (Head of the Computer Technology Department) at Greenville Tech with any kind of problem. He was utterly insulting and if I’d had someone in a place of business treat me in such a rude manner, I’d not only notify their supervisor, but I’d also never frequent the establishment again. Take it as you will…
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?