We all make mistakes in our relationships with other people. Sometimes, they're mistakes that can be corrected with an apology. Sometimes - "if only I'd said that, and not that." Sometimes, they're mistakes that are incomprehensible even to ourselves, and sometimes, we do things that show us up as not quite the likeable hero of our own story that we want to think we are.
I've done a few things. Some of them couldn't have been done by somebody as all-round friendly and nice as the person that I know myself to be. Did I really do that? Oh. I did. One get-out is denial; clearly I wasn't thinking straight that day. Another is a weak, perverse, cover-up form of self-affirmation: hey, I'm tougher and more bad-ass than I look (it wears off quickly). And a third is spiritual growth - take it into the complex mix of good and bad, heroic and too shameful to admit, that makes up every human personality - and move a tiny bit closer to an understanding of who I really am.
But this is not about me. I'm following an exchange on Facebook. A young journalist has done some work for a PR agency that was first accepted and then rejected, and has asked for advice on how to get her invoice paid. My reading of it is: the PR agency is a recent start-up; the young guy behind it was unprofessional (and perhaps good-natured) enough to accept the work before he even looked at it. Then he ran into a cash-flow problem, or changed his mind about what he wanted, or read the work and it wasn't what he'd expected - or whatever; and his solution was to reject the work, go back on his explicit commitment to pay for it, and reply to the journalist's request for payment - well, not in a friendly way.
In an intimidating way, actually. The manner of the rejection puts me on the journalist's side. I feel quite cross. The closed group of journalists - thousands of them - where the journalist has gone for advice seems quite cross too. The young PR guy has shown himself to be something of a bully, in my estimation. There's a storm blowing up around him, and up to a point, he deserves it.
But I'd say one thing. We've all done things that we regret. There's a group on Facebook that doesn't like this guy right now, but I hope they give him a chance to atone - and maybe to learn something about himself, and put it right.
I've done a few things. Some of them couldn't have been done by somebody as all-round friendly and nice as the person that I know myself to be. Did I really do that? Oh. I did. One get-out is denial; clearly I wasn't thinking straight that day. Another is a weak, perverse, cover-up form of self-affirmation: hey, I'm tougher and more bad-ass than I look (it wears off quickly). And a third is spiritual growth - take it into the complex mix of good and bad, heroic and too shameful to admit, that makes up every human personality - and move a tiny bit closer to an understanding of who I really am.
But this is not about me. I'm following an exchange on Facebook. A young journalist has done some work for a PR agency that was first accepted and then rejected, and has asked for advice on how to get her invoice paid. My reading of it is: the PR agency is a recent start-up; the young guy behind it was unprofessional (and perhaps good-natured) enough to accept the work before he even looked at it. Then he ran into a cash-flow problem, or changed his mind about what he wanted, or read the work and it wasn't what he'd expected - or whatever; and his solution was to reject the work, go back on his explicit commitment to pay for it, and reply to the journalist's request for payment - well, not in a friendly way.
In an intimidating way, actually. The manner of the rejection puts me on the journalist's side. I feel quite cross. The closed group of journalists - thousands of them - where the journalist has gone for advice seems quite cross too. The young PR guy has shown himself to be something of a bully, in my estimation. There's a storm blowing up around him, and up to a point, he deserves it.
But I'd say one thing. We've all done things that we regret. There's a group on Facebook that doesn't like this guy right now, but I hope they give him a chance to atone - and maybe to learn something about himself, and put it right.