Well, you can't control feelings, so she can certainly feel angry and hurt. However, you CAN control actions, and resigning seems awfully drama-queeny. I would have contacted you after the first Yahoo posting and said "Thanks for the head's-up. Next time, please give it to me privately and I'll fix it for ya." Taking action before finding out your intentions (last straw or not) is not helpful behavior.

Yeah, and the multiple cc's? It's All About Her Drama. Anyway, I'm sorry, Susan, that sucks.

Oh my god I'm so hungry. And sleepy.

Yeah, and the multiple cc's? It's All About Her Drama. Anyway, I'm sorry, Susan, that sucks.

She wasn't the one who contacted me--she sent her resignation to the board, and one of the board members contacted me and S to let us know what had happened so we could assure the webmistress we hadn't meant to hurt feelings or step on toes.

It's just frustrating to me because, while I make no claims to being an especially nice person, the one thing I'm not is subtle or catty. It would never occur to me to try to hurt someone I only barely know (I'm still new enough to the group and bad enough with names that I'd have trouble picking the webmistress out of a line-up without a name tag), nor to be so indirect about doing it. If I have a problem with you, you might not know it right away, because I'm a bit conflict-avoidant, but if I decide to bring it up, I don't play silly games.

Susan, it seems more like an unfortunate coincidence. K was probably on the brink of going a little nuts and any comment, good or bad, would have made her do what she did.

You think you can trust librarians and catalogers. You can't. I'm on the section which describes the construction of Cutters (the bits of the call number that describe the author, not essential info). They're constructed off the first three letters of the Main Entry, generally the author's last name.

Their example last name? Cumming.

They're sitting in their office snickering like twelve-year-olds, I know it.

yup, they are snickering

Anyone can hurt someone with the best of intentions. In your case Susan, I'm pretty sure it was how she took it not what she did - probably looking for an excuse to resign (thats what the "last straw" thing means to me.

I'm pretty sure I hurt VW in our religion discussion a few days ago - and not because she took something wrong but because I had a prejudice I was completely unaware of.

Basically in the course of explaining my position on something I started by saying that it came from an emotional basis. But then I used what I thought was colorful way of saying that I tried to have a rational support even for beliefs that are not provable or do not have an emotional basis. But the phrase I used was not "colorful" . It was highly offensive, and I think I would never have been used if not based on a prejudice I was completely unaware I had.

Like most prejudices it came in part from ignorance and in part from fear. Although I'm intellectually aware of the issue I really wasn't until a few years ago - honestly believed the postion I held to be an enlightened one. So apparently the knowledge hasn't penetrated all the way down yet. The fear is that mental illness runs in my family; I'm at major genetic risk for a number of problems; so the particular phrase I used was not just sloppiness; it reflected a real personal terror that had congealed something nasty without my knowing it.

And when VW made an oblique reference to something hurting her and sending her into a blind rage it did not occur to me that it could he anything I said, until for some reason the clue fairy hit me this morning. I'll work on the prejudice, and in the meantime make sure I don't inflict it on anyone else again. So I'm sorry my personal weakness caused you pain VW. Hope that knowing where it came from lessens the hurt a bit.

{{Susan}} I've done things like that quite a few times, I think. You never know how other people will react.

I just offended someone today - because I described my neighborhood as NOT being a 'clean suburban area' . which it isn't - there are no big line between single family homes, multi family home, comercial zones, etc. I think they though I meant dirty. Which seems strange because I said I chose to live here...