Bullies v. Public Servants, and the Deep Freeze

Yesterday on the campaign trail, I was making some fundraising calls.  This whole concept of campaign is new to me, and calling people I don't know to ask them for money is challenging.

"Hi!  You have never met me, but please give me money!  You will get nothing in return, except a thank you note!"

There is more to it than that, but sometimes that is what it feels like.  I am not getting the money myself -- this is to fund our aligned visions of what a well-run district should look like.

I digress.

After lunch and after I took Claire Adele to the orthodontist, one of the people I called left me a message, so I called him back.  I am surprised when people call me back, but when I connect with them, I am often not surprised.  Most of the time, these people have a story they want to tell me about the district and they usually have interesting stories and opinions they want to share.  Most of these people don't harbor any ill will towards me, as I do not yet work for the district.

This guy who called me back was different.  He was difficult.  He tried to pin me down and ask me lots of harassing questions.  Part of me understands I am in the hot seat, and life as an elected official will bring in lots of angry parents.  It wasn't until later that I realized this guy wasn't angry at me.  He had an agenda, which I did not know.  He wanted to know how I would fix the district.  There wasn't a right answer to any of his questions.  To him, it was irrevocably broken, beyond what any human could repair.  Nothing I could have said would satisfied him, as he was predetermined to be unsatisfied.

And I had to sit there and take it, within reason.  I couldn't haul off and call him unreasonable.  I couldn't say he was a bully.  I had to smile, be kind, be respectful, and still be respectfully assertive.  he knew that by virtue of my position, I was stuck.

But that doesn't mean I don't have power.

I now understand the bureaucratic Deep Freeze.  The Deep Freeze is when a bureaucrat works with an outsider or advocate who is an intolerant bully.  They can't tell the bully to fuck off, so they can just not respond to emails, phone calls, or acknowledge them in public.

I asked him what he thought needed to be done to fix the problem, and that clarified for me what he was so upset about. Even still, I felt attacked because we so fundamentally disagreed.  I tried to find common ground, but wasn't looking for that.  He would only accept is position as the right one, never mind my years of experience.  He told me as much.

Sometimes I see advocates working on not getting the Deep Freeze.  I know some women who are borderline bullies.  They can be difficult to work with  They kind of know they are abrasive, but they really don't have the social skills or the desire to stop being abrasive.  So they avoid it by sucking up to the bureaucrat with obvious and over the top flattery.  It can be painful to watch.

And then there are the Super Bullies.  The bullies so grand that they think every word they think is straight from God's lips.  These bullies cannot be frozen, as at times the freezing process causes more damage than not freezing them.  So they are managed, I suppose.

Yet, the Deep Freeze doesn't solve problems--it puts them on the back burner and prevents them from boiling over.  Yet how do we manage the bully to protect ourselves from the blowback of their wrath?  Public servants have been struggling with this for centuries, I am sure, so much so that it is easier to go to war than talk.