I'm sitting in my office one day and I get a call from a bank officer of one of the nation's top 50-bankcard acquirers. Let's call him Mr. Fidget. He is upset with me, and thinks that I am making a big mistake by saying nice things in The Green Sheet, about one of his competitors. (This kind of call happens with more regularity than I would like.)
Mr. Fidget started off by simply telling me that I must not understand the situation, and then, of course, goes on to tell me what it is that he knows about that organization that I don't. Now, of course, I didn't really take this conversation very seriously because I know many people respect Mr. Fidget and perhaps he was just putting me on. Also, I am wondering what he is up to, and IF I can have as much fun with this as he is apparently having. So I push and question and generally make light of his concerns. This proves to be a mistake.
Have you ever noticed how when someone is getting upset, the volume of the conversation goes up, and more serious thoughts begin to spill over until he works himself into a real snit? It was well into the second serious statement about lack of integrity and financial mistakes and who is planning to sue whom that I knew that Mr. Fidget and I were having a serious conversation. Of course, by this time I realized that I was indeed being "yelled at."
Now, I know that we have all been "yelled at" at some point in our lives. I can remember that time I dropped my younger sister off my shoulders while we were playing on the sidewalk and broke her front tooth. Boy, I sure got yelled at then and I still remember how bad I felt and how deserving of that "yelling at" I really felt. Even though I knew I deserved to be yelled at, thinking back about it, I still didn't like it. I was only about ten years old then, but I can still remember thinking that one day, I was going to be a grown-up, and then, for sure, even when I had done something bad, I wouldn't get yelled at.
Well, here I was getting yelled at, and nearly forty years later! Now I'm not going to tell you that I don't get yelled at from time to time. In fact, given my track record of calling it the way I see it in our industry, you can imagine that I have gotten yelled at quite a bit. In fact, on more than one occasion, the person yelling at me about some strange thing I said in The Green Sheet later sued me.
But anyway back to my "yelling at" from Mr. Fidget. I'm thinking to myself, "Why does he think that he can yell at me for expressing my views of someone else's organization?" Besides, it's not like I said something bad about him, his organizations, or for heaven's sake, broke out his tooth, or anything. But then the yelling began to calm. You can always recognize a really good "yelling at" when you can identify a clear ebb and flow. You know, when you get back to the part where you get the explanation about why you are getting yelled at in the first place, and the disappointment part, when you are letting down someone or something of importance.
This is the point of calm reflection on the matter at hand and, in my case, a great opportunity to reach for the small fridge in my office and get a drink. Yes, it was non-alcoholic, but then while this part of the conversation is bubbling (sorry), I wonder how did we get to this "friends" part of the conversation anyway, because I really didn't know Mr. Fidget that well.
Well, I no more had this thought than Fidget is off on another rant. This is the mark of a really good "yelling at," when you can sustain yet another righteous indignation within the same conversation. In the end, Mr. Fidget and I did not achieve an "understanding" in this conversation. In fact, I would have to say that there was no meeting of the minds at all.
Needless to say, all that was going to happen was time would pass, there would be a cooling off period, and Mr. Fidget and I would see each other at some future point. This came at the recent San Francisco ETA meeting. Here I was standing among a number of people talking and up walks Mr. Fidget. I must say that I was impressed with the agility of the move that Mr. Fidget made in being able to slip into the middle of a ring of people who were chatting, while placing his back squarely to me. It put me in the interesting position of having to round Mr. Fidget to say hello and extend my hand and to, in turn, get a, "Hello, I didn't see you standing there." With a handshake, Mr. Fidget was off again with some strange looks and glances from those standing around.
All of this made me ponder the process. Was I upset with Mr. Fidget? No! Did Mr. Fidget achieve his objective of getting me, or for that matter the industry, to know his point about the competitor? No! Could Mr. Fidget come out of the shadows and openly say what he said to me, in writing or on the record? Most likely not, although I am sure that he knows that I would be more than happy to print it.
So I guess the result is that I had something reinforced for me, that I really already knew, that I like being ignored better than I like being yelled at.
