Unbreakable Rubber Balls

 

One of my favourite Dignity Statement Stories is a regular spot on The Gas Spanner, and it is one I save for a bit of Christmas goodwill because in this case the target later apologized to me, for example see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-gas-spanner-programme-104.html. Another similar tale happened to me many years earlier when I was quite new to hospital portering. I on reception duty in JRI Maternity, later called the Women's Centre, when somebody approached the admissions desk next door to reception. The patient was clearly what is known as a "Karen", a very entitled female customer who is never satisfied with the service she receives. It quickly became apparent that she was very unhappy with the situation and began lambasting the two staff members serving her, a middle-aged woman and a young male trainee about my own age, his late teens. At one point when the trainee was speaking she jerked her finger at him and yelled, and I distinctly recall her exact words: "I'm talking to this lady here! I'm not dealing with you; you're too stupid!" He opened his mouth to reply, but the young man's supervisor cut him off: "Jonathan, let me deal with this." The young trainee got up and slumped off to the office. I thought at the time that I'd like to have seen the supervisor reprimand the patient for how the patient spoke to her colleague, but she didn't. Many times through the years I've been in a similar predicament and received no support from line management. Whether you do or not depends on your tacit subconscious status within the team and mine was always very low. A teenage admin junior is right at the bottom of the pile. A few minutes later the young man came out of the admissions office wearing his coat and walked off towards the entrance. He didn't say a word, but he was weeping. His supervisor called after him: "Jonathan, where are you going?" He didn't respond so she chased after him out of the hospital building. After a while she came back and said: "Sorry..." and continued the interview with the patient alone.

What was amazing about this whole debacle was that while the supervisor was running after the new recruit, obviously trying to persuade him to return, I was watching the Karen. There are several ways somebody like her will react to that eventuality. Most people will shrug their shoulders and double down on how they are being affronted, "the customer is always right" and that everything was the young man's own fault. He really is "stupid!" and deserved to be called so. A few of them, luckily a minority, will even smirk with sadistic satisfaction that they reduced somebody else to tears. This woman was different. What I saw in her expression was a look of shock, disbelief and self-reproach. This woman clearly had had no idea exactly how much of a bitch she was and when she suddenly realized, she hated herself for it. This is sadly an unusual response; most people lack the introspective consciousness to think in those terms. I think feminism has a lot to answer for here. It teaches woman that men... or to be specific: white men, occupy a place of unique evil among human demographies. Everything bad that happens in the world is our fault; therefore there is no code of conduct in their dealings with us. They can be as mean, deceitful and abusive at they like to us because we deserve it, each and every one of us, regardless of our own personal actions. What this incident taught me is that women who exhibit feminist cruelty are not all feminists; some of them are ordinary women who have come to believe another feminist lie; that if a woman is troubled by qualms and says things like: "Okay, we know they're all bastards, but we shouldn't be nasty to them all the time should we?" then there is a fallback position. This states that white men are all resilient enough to take whatever abuse an "oppressed!" "Woman!" can hurl at them. We are like unbreakable rubber balls on a squash court. No matter how many times you whack us against the wall we just bounce back unscathed. When they realize that this is not true, they suddenly find themselves staring at a pile of broken glass lying on the floor of the squash court realizing that what they ignorantly threw against the wall was actually a crystal goblet, and they've just destroyed it. The interview at the admissions desk continued and the ex-Karen lowered her voice from then on, but I still overheard her saying: "Is he going to be alright?... I really should apologize." I don't know what happened to that young trainee; I never saw him again. I assumed he decided ward clerking was not for him and started a different career. If so then I hope he fared better than he did at OxRad. I expect that the ex-Karen learned a lesson that day and didn't act so horribly ever again. The late comedian Robin Williams, somebody who wrestled with his own morale throughout his life, once put it very well: "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always."
See here for more information: https://hpanwo.blogspot.com/2021/08/political-correctness-portal.html.