So, I Hit Him

I ran into Rene on the ferry going to work one morning. Rene, who was from our district office located in a French speaking community, was visiting our office for training. His expressive way of speaking, along with a ready smile and laughing eyes were welcome additions to a normally dull and routine morning commute. It was with everyday tones that he recounted a story that ended with, "So I hit him". "He", as it turned out, was Rene's boss, and the story unfolded as we made the short walk from the ferry terminal to the office. Rene and his boss had gotten into an argument over work assignments, and once the argument had reached the boiling point, both parties were hurling insults, fast and furious. In the midst of this, Rene's boss made a move to stand up from his chair, and towards Rene. Rene advised his boss not to stand up or he would hit him. His boss, in no mood for advice, or perhaps feeling equal to the challenge, stood up. What followed, as Rene recounted with a careless shrug, "He stood up, so I hit him". Just like that, he told me all calm and matter of fact. His tone seemed to suggest that even the most casual observer could appreciate the ironclad cause and effect relationship between standing up, and being hit. Judging by Rene's easy manner and comfortable justification, I could almost believe that his boss had been entitled to that swift upper cut. His boss quickly recovered from his position on the carpet, and landed a blow of his own. Rene, however, was the undisputed victor having struck that massive first blow. I wondered what life was like in an office where people settled disputes by slugging it out. According to Rene, his boss didn't bother him again. That fact alone made this alternative approach to conflict resolution seem attractive to me. Dreams of a mythical workplace, free from a boss's whims (that do not undergo an acid test for reason or sanity), loom like holy grails to working folk everywhere. You could spend a lifetime searching for the "workplace of the grail" and catch only a glimpse of it, before it slipped through your fingers and drifted away on the wind. Judging by Rene's calm demeanor, and his evident satisfaction with the outcome of the altercation, I was almost convinced that a fistfight might be the way to go. I wondered if they were both comfortable having settled a territorial dispute in the way males throughout the animal kingdom do? Of course, they say that: history is written favorably by the victors, and the boss may not have been satisfied with his newly defined territory, once the bout points were tallied. I couldn't get past the image of his boss sitting in an office somewhere, carefully choosing his words to avoid being sprawled on the carpet again. I found myself contrasting this episode of swift naked violence to the way disputes were handled in our office. There, bitter enemies squared off sometimes over a period of years. Each biding their time, waiting for opportunities to carve pieces off of their foes empire, while reinforcing their own. This was warfare by minute installments. Instead of a quick kill, hapless foes were bled of their power, position, and peace of mind in bits and pieces in a long tortuous campaign. Who's to say which way is more barbaric. There must be a better way, and yet despite all the politically correct emphasis put on conflict resolution via smartly packaged training seminars for employees, resolution by warfare is still the preferred choice.

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