Chez Spud

For a professional communicator, I have a disturbing knack of saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. I’m a lot better these days, but as a child and teenager my lack of tact was verging on the legendary. I think I must be over the worst of it though as I struggled to think of any recent examples but there are some absolute corkers when I look back in to my murky past. I present the evidence:

1. When I was 18, I was a prefect at school (well of course I was, such a good two shoes). One of the less glamorous responsibilities of being a prefect was controlling the lunch queue which had a habit of snaking around the entire school unless it was properly managed. Pupils were fed by age, with the little ones getting lunch last (seems very harsh looking back, but that’s English public schools for you). One day the queue was taking on a bit of a life of its own, and the master on duty kept shouting at me to keep the queue shorter. So I would get rid of 20 or 30 little pips and tell them to come back later. But the minute my back was turned, those little squeeks would join the queue again. Exasperated I shooed the ruffians away, and shouted that the next person to join the queue would be ‘ on fatigue’ (English public school for ‘given loads of nasty jobs to do as a punishment). That had told ‘em, the criminals.

So I couldn’t believe my eyes when, bold as brass, a girl walked up to the queue and joined it. That was it, I flipped and bawled at her in front of the entire lunch queue to Teach Her A Lesson. I finished up by shouting ‘What is the MATTER with you? Were you not listening to what I said? Are you DEAF?’. “Yes”, she sobbed…at which point I noticed her hearing aid. Cringe cringe cringe.

Lesson One: not all disabilities are visible. Do not make assumptions. Do not make flip remarks about disabilities, they will rightly come back and bite you on the bum.

2. A good few years ago I had the difficult task of taking a very senior member of the management team of the law firm I worked at on one side, to tell him he wasn’t allowed to talk to the media, and that he had broken every rule in the book by doing so and had put the firm in a difficult position. It was a very awkward discussion, he was more senior than me, more experienced, older. He took it reasonably well but his pride had clearly taken a knock. Determined to part on good terms I finished the meeting by saying, “No hard feelings, hey? Let me buy you a beer some day”. “I’m a mormon” he replied, “I don’t drink”. Cringe, cringe, cringe.

Lesson Two: do not make assumptions. Not everyone is a total lush like you. Stop insulting people, they don’t like it and it’s completely unnecessary with a bit of thought.

3.In my 20s, I worked in a small team of people headed by a wonderful, if rather scatty, old lady. She was a marvellous person, loving and kind and was so supportive of me – like a second mother really. But working with her was quite a challenge at time as her age was against her in many ways. One day she started wibbling around, I was on a deadline and didn’t have the time for any wibbling. Needing an outlet for my frustration, I emailed another girl in our team and said,

“Oh, X has only just walked in and already she is annoying me so much I want to kill her!”

You know, one of those exaggerating for effect kind of emails. Except I didn’t sent it to the other girl in our team, I sent it to X herself. CRINGE CRINGE CRINGE. And you know the worst bit? When she read it and I realised what I’d done, I burst in to tears…and she came over and put her arms around me and gave me a hug. Yup, the lovely, kind, caring lady gave ME a hug because I felt bad. Uh, I still feel sick with shame thinking about it and that was about 15 years ago.

Lesson Three: if you really must say something bad about somebody, either seriously or in jest, never EVER put it in writing.

I always fancied a career in the diplomatic service, but alas I’m not sure the quest for world peace would be well served by my bombastic style. Plus, I’d never be able to actually negotiate anything on the basis that my mouth is normally full of my feet.

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