On Boarding

When I had a corporate job, we got a new team member who was young and pretty and a bit shy. The day she joined the team, we had a team meeting that got loud and angry which wasn't the norm. 

I could see she was being triggered and I made an effort to calm things down, smooth things over and signal that this was not normal behavior. So I knew from day one she could fall apart if confronted with the right stressors though she was perfectly competent most of the time.

I was sympathetic because I am capable of being that way myself though it probably wasn't obvious to people at work because confrontation of that sort isn't what makes me blow a fuse internally. I seem to handle such situations better than average.

I eventually learned she had an alcoholic father. Most likely, he went on angry tirades when drunk and there was no right answer when dealing with him at such times -- or no one in the family knew such -- and her experience of that was as a child who felt helpless. 

My father drank heavily though for me this was stories from a past that was before my memory. My mother didn't care because she said he was never a mean drunk and there was enough money.

I remember him having a beer with dinner when I was like four. I don't remember ever seeing him drunk.

A guy I knew socially told an anecdote once. Before joining the military, he was an orderly in a psychiatric hospital and one day he runs into a guy who is trouble and figures he's an escapee from the psych ward. So he manhandled him and delivered him back to the psych ward.

Nope, not a mental patient. Just a drunk guy mouthing off.

So some people do know how to deal effectively with situations like a badly behaved drunk guy, though usually because they have training for it, typically related to their job.

I have difficult kids and sometimes when one was blowing a gasket under stressful circumstances, I replied "Go to bed." He was exhausted and falling apart. Sleep fixed it and I did nothing else to address it.

I didn't think my new team member was really fundamentally "in the wrong" to be sitting there with eyes bulging at the unprofessional behavior she was seeing in her first team meeting and I felt she had every reason to be worried this was going to be normal behavior for the team. I think socially it's pretty typical to try to make a good first impression when there are new people and I was appalled that my boss was a boss and was doing this.

Anyway, I'm aware there are situations where you need to just throw someone in the deep end of the pool and hope they swim. My understanding is a high percentage of deaths on the field of battle are the first battle for the person in question. 

My father was a twice decorated veteran. He talked once to my sister after she was brutally assaulted about "You have a moment where you realize it's him or me and you decide to live."

But an awful lot of social stuff is learned behavior and for many things the "sink or swim" approach amounts to asshole behavior. 

So one day someone was verbally telling my newish shy teammate "Just go down to blah and tell so and so..." and I could see on her face she was starting to freak out. 

We worked in cubicles where everything looks the same. It's easy to get lost.

A simple intro would remedy her nervousness with meeting new people. 

I was certain if I walked this young woman down ONCE and showed her where she needed to go and introduced her to the person she needed to talk to, she would be absolutely fine if she ever needed to do it again and if I didn't this would be a debacle. So I just took a few minutes of my time to walk her down. 

This is part of why I loathe the movie Along Came Polly which actively promotes the idea that anyone shy or risk averse is a pathetic loser and just needs to get over it. It actively promotes being insensitive and a jackass.

I've had people tell me I'm a free spirit with a devil may care attitude a la the Polly character whose asshole behavior is "the cure" for a character who, like me, worked in insurance and had gut issues making it problematic to go to a new restaurant he had never been to.

I'm not a free spirit. If I seem confident in situations you see as scary, I probably have experience and education that prepared me for it which you lack.

My shy teammate had an appalling on-boarding experience and it would have been terrible even if she wasn't both young and someone with baggage that made it especially hard for her. Anyone wanting to pretend she's just fragile and neurotic is excusing inexcusable, unprofessional behavior from her boss who was responsible for introducing her to the team in an appropriate fashion.

And I wonder if this is especially problematic for women who may see more inappropriate behavior at work and have less work experience overall informing them "This isn't normal. It isn't appropriate. And my discomfort isn't me being weak."