17/04/2009 by Ellie at TFP.

I had a rather shocking experience today which left me feeling shaken.  I had just finished purchasing some items in a small shop when I heard a young man respond to a question from another employer with the words ‘It’s me you black cunt’ !  I turned round and the young man seeing the shock on my face immediately apologized.  I said I found the comments very offensive and they were racist and sexist.  He apologized again.  He was not being aggressive, this was said in a banterish fashion; what is shocking is that he was comfortable saying this without any thought. 

I am making an assumption here that such comments were seen as perfectly normal by the management as no one said anything till I asked for the manager.  At which point a man I had seen sitting in the office behind the counter immediately sprang to his feet and said he would deal with this later.  I left with my purchases.

I pondered how to deal with this in an effective way.  What would you have done?

Harmless Banter – Or Is It?  

Posted in Diary | No Comments »

16/04/2009 by Ellie at TFP.

This was a title in the newspaper, about young people, yesterday.  This made me think (again!) about how we communicate.  We don’t actually listen when we are having a conversation.  We have also discussed this in our newsletter Talkeeze and  Conversations with Ellie and Jadzia.

A lot of the time we have our own agenda and so much want to get our point of view over that we don’t actually hear what is being said.  Since I have been paying attention to this I notice how much I do it and how much it is done to me. Eg I was telling a friend something and she suddenly started talking about something that had caught her eye.  I felt cut off and not heard;  this got me to see that I also do this and presumably the person who was trying to tell me something may have felt equally frustrated and not heard.

Another little thing that we tend to do is finish off other people’s sentences: again this cuts them off mid-flight as we make an assumption that we know what they are thinking.  Sometimes we are correct but sometimes we are wrong. 

Back to young people: their universal mantra is ‘You don’t listen’.  Something happens or we see something and we immediately jump to conclusions (assumptions!) and act on these assumptions before actually checking out what really did happen.  I know that when I actually stay in the moment and ask questions and also state how I feel I create a much more harmonious atmosphere around me.  Whereas if I stomp in ‘mouth blazing’ I do not get a resolution I get a conflict situation.  The key seems to be to hit the pause button before hitting the blame button.

Posted in Diary | No Comments »