Who Are You Kidding?

Last year I worked for a company that started all of it's meetings with some sort of "share" time. This obviously annoyed me to no end because to be quite honest I didn't give a crap what everybody else at the table's favorite memory of a baby sitter was. These also annoyed me because not only was I forced to participate but because I wasn't interested in sharing actual details of my life with these people. I'd make something up that wasn't as outlandish as everybody else's stories and would once again be the office outcast.

One such meeting the opening share time question was "What's a pet peeve and how are you working on it?" People went around the table really talking about things they were actually working on in their personal lives. I think one girl even cried which forced me not to laugh. I'm not saying I'm perfect, because who is, but when it comes to the crap I'm working on in my personal life, to me, work just ain't the forum where I'm going to openly discuss that stuff, and, it shouldn't be for anyone.

As it rolled around to me I was torn between my current real answer, "these meetings" and how I was working it, "looking for a new job," and "people who wear the wrong socks in cycling." I went with the socks. I made up some crap about how you can't just have gym socks and don't be ridiculous and show up with tube socks. They have to be cycling socks and they they should be straight and pulled up as high as they'll go. To be honest, this wasn't an entire lie, but I am obviously not affected by other people's sock choice while on a bike.

This morning, I was reminded of that meeting because I received an email that cuts right to a life long pet peeve of mine, but one I have no intention of working on. That pet peeve is when people make completely empty threats to try and get something done. I won't go into the details of this one, but there is absolutely no merit to the threat as it was laid out. The more I think about it, I don't think it's the threat itself that bothers me, or rather the non enforceable consequence for not following the actions. The part that annoys me is that for someone to make such a ridiculous threat, they must think that all the people who read it are so stupid that instead of quickly realizing the lack of merit, they'll all be scared into doing whatever this person says. I find as an adult most of these empty threats made by people have some sort of financial link to them which instantly negate the person's actual ability to follow through if you ignore the action they want you to take.

When I worked at summer camp I was amazed by the staffers who would throw out empty threats at the campers all the time. The problem is, kids are way smarter than most people give them credit for and if you tell little Johnny that if he keeps doing x behavior he's going to get y punishment, but you don't actually hold him to it the next time he does it, he not only keeps doing that, but you just gave him permission to do whatever the hell he wants because he knows you're not going to follow through. I never had this problem as a staffer at summer camp because I had no problem taking every bit of little johnny's fun away when he didn't do what was asked. In the end, guess who never had follow up issues with little johnny?

It just doesn't make any sense to threaten some consequence that you can't enforce. It only makes you look stupid and you lose the respect of your peers. Whether it's your kids, your staff, your peers or your enemy, you're better off never crossing that line if you can't or don't plan to actually enforce what you say. And besides threatening people doesn't make them jump to action, it makes them all quickly form an alliance against you. And, in my own case that spurred this little discussion, I'm still sitting right where I was before I received that email. No action on my part is being taken.