There are two unrelated stories out last week that struck a common theme with me. It has to do with respect for others, civility and accepting people for who they are.
Who doesn't want to be part of the "in crowd"? Who doesn't want to be liked? ...or at the least, be accepted? What's the point of humiliating a member of your team, work unit or family? Power. We talk about a misuse of power, but when we see it; we're apt to dismiss it. It's just a joke. It was nothing. You need a thicker skin than that.
Sometimes the jokes wear thin and are no longer funny. Maybe it is something. Something cruel that should stop. Maybe after months flow onto more than a year, there no more skin left for protection.
At what point do we decide a "joke" crosses over the line to bullying?
The two stories are about the Miami Dolphins Right Tackle, Jonathan Martin (who walked out of the Dolphins training facility last week after what most would think was a silly prank) and a totally unrelated letter to Dear Prudence posted on Slate where a "handsome intern" pretended to flirt with an overweight divorced women 20 years his senior as a joke to the point where she became the butt of the joke in the office.
An NFL ball club is not an equal comparison to all corporate life, but both situations pull the drapes away from a not so pretty view of what the work life is for some people.
The NFL is both a physical and mental grinder. The NFL is synonymous with high pressure, no tolerance for anything but success, and NO warm fuzzies. In this video you see Marshall Faulk sit down with Kurt Warner, Michael Irvin and Warren Sapp to discuss the NFL locker room culture. If you focus on Marshall Faulk you see part of the problem. Faulk can't see the problem. I don't know, if I was Jonathan Martin, maybe after 18 months of being called "Big Weirdo", insults to his family and all the other "pranks", I'd have enough of that shit too. What's surprising in Martin's situation is that most NFL players pack it in pre-season. Initially, I had a problem wrapping my mind around the idea that a 6"5", 312 pound man could be bullied, but bullying is a function of power and a 2nd year NFL player has next to none with the higher ups in his ball club.
The upshot is that the NFL wants this story to go away and for it to be all about Jonathan Martin and nothing to do with the possibility of NFL players being abusive jerks or NFL coaches tacitly condoning a hostile work place. Jonathan Martin is playing along, probably so he can find another team. He's texting reassurances,
“Yeah, I’m good man. It’s insane bro but just know I don’t blame you guys at all it’s just the culture around football and the locker room got to me a little.”
Yeah, a mixed message for sure. There's some "
there",
there; however, what is "
there" is yet to be disclosed. The murkiness alone lends credibility to the bullying story and I suspect Martin is now being leaned on by his agents and coaches now that his team mates have been exposed. It's an ugly thing, bullying, and it doesn't fit the NFL ideal.
I'd like to think of a professional ball club as the extreme when it comes to work place abuses and that the rest of us who work in "normal" offices have it much better. Well, no, that's not necessarily the case. I saw this at Slate. This older woman was the target at her office of a "handsome intern" flirting with her who made her feel special only to find out it was a joke on her. The intern laughed about his deception at an event in front of other employees, including management, and they all had a "good" laugh at the woman's expense. I'm sure if I could talk to her co-workers; I'd get the back story but it bothers me that the manager at the event didn't realize the "prank" had gone too far and failed to see the cruelty of what was happening. Sadly, it's not rare. I can pull too many anecdotes out of my memory where one of my co-workers was unfairly picked on. I bet you can too. How many of us have defended the office scapegoat or joke? You haven't? You're not alone. The office scapegoat is alone.
School is different from the workplace. For one thing, the stakes are higher on the job as it's your livelihood. It's in school where we learn to become adults. School is where we score our first social successes and failures. School is where we hopefully learn what is acceptable behavior and to avoid behaving unacceptably. Hopefully, maturity comes with age. Some people learn these lessons early while others don't seem to learn them at all.
I remember when I was tormented for being different. I remember moving when I was 7 years old from a large city in upstate New York to a middle of Ohio farm town. Culture shock doesn't begin to describe how awful that adjustment was. My parents were accepted, but not their kids. I had an upstate New York accent in a Midwest twang state. My clothes were from NY. I had a British grandmother who was a polio survivor. My father valued education for his daughters. My parents didn't tolerate stupidity. As a girl, I was expected to be smart, but act dumb. That's confusing. I looked funny, talked funny, had a funny looking family and wasn't a dummy. I learned quick enough to suck it up and act like I ignored the constant harassment; but I did resent it. I look back and wonder how I kept my cool.
One lesson from that town has stayed with me all these years. There was a boy I knew in the 7th grade. He was born there, which should have been an advantage for him, but it wasn't. He was teased more than me and was constantly harassed. The last day in 7th grade in my Social Studies class, my teacher left for an errand and that boy was viciously targeted. It was bad, but it stopped about 20 seconds before the teacher walked back in the classroom. It had been that way all year long. He had no friends. He always sat by himself at lunch. He never spoke. Playing Dodge Ball was torture for him. He was constantly called names. Picked on for what he wore and for the fact that he lived with his grandmother, not his parents. I was not his friend. I was finally, not the joke. I was glad I wasn't him. School ended for the year and I didn't think about him at all that summer. He was invisible. I can see him in my mind, but I can't remember his name. He deserved better. Then, the first day of 8th grade we came back and he wasn't there. The day before school, he stuck his head in a bucket of gasoline and (we never got the details) he died. That was my introduction to teen suicide.
I remembered him when I read these two stories.
Edmund Burke once wrote:
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Obscure, eighteenth Century language is hard to absorb, maybe a modern day translation is in order to size up dog pack mentality.
Bad things happen when good people do nothing.
Back in the
video at the top of this diary, Kurt Warner mentioned that it was important to recognize when teasing "goes too far". He implies that it's up to the team leaders to pull hazing back. It's also up to co-workers to pull back from making a colleague a joke. School is still different. I wish I knew what I had seen and said something.
What is "too far"? When is teasing too much? When do we see ourselves as a cruel bully or an accomplice to cruelty? How many times have we passed off cruelty as a harmless "joke"?
Hopefully, we figure it out before someone sticks their head in a bucket of gasoline.
8:06 AM PT: The information is coming in quickly about Jonathan Martin. Now, there are allegations of racism. http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/...
8:31 AM PT: Per Tony Dungy: When Incognito entered the draft in 2005, the Colts had him on the “DNDC” list, which means “do not draft because of character.”
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/...
1:49 PM PT: The texts and VM Incognito allegedly left for Martin are pretty disgusting. And, there's a lot of trash talk out there against Martin. It's a sad situation.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/...