One of our mags had a movie screening last night and the first two readers to redeem their free tickets were entitled to a bottle of wine. Unfortunately, there was no official queue because a table had not been set up for us, and as a result, nobody quite knows who really got there first. It came down to three readers, who all claimed that they were there from a little past 8pm, one and a half hours before the movie was due to begin, and who, naturally, all insisted that they were entitled to a bottle of wine.
R suggested that the three of them participate in a lucky draw to be fair, but the husband(?) of one of the readers immediately got in her face and said: “Who are you to say this? What gives you the right to suggest this thing?” R replied that she was actually a staff member of the magazine, to which the man demanded rudely: “I do not agree. I am going to lodge an official report about this. I want your names; I’m going to make this official.”
Contrast this guy to another reader, who although thought that she had arrived first, admitted that there was no way to be sure and said she was happy to concede because she didn’t want to make trouble for us. She thought a lucky draw would be fair, but Mr. Rude and Pompous refused so that idea went out the window.
In the end, R and I gave the Rude Man and another reader who also refused to budge (but was not rude) their bottles of wine, and made alternate arrangements for the nice reader who said she was happy to concede, so she wouldn’t come away empty-handed. We were more than happy to help her out because she was being so understanding and considerate about the situation.
The Bully was consistently rude, demanding and antagonistic, but we stayed professional and kept our smiles, partly because we didn’t want to create a scene in front of everyone else, and partly because we didn’t quite know how best to put him in his place.
When everything was settled – and hindsight is always the worst because it is only then that you can think of a million ways to handle something better – we decided it had been really stupid of us not to take down the guy’s details as well. After all, he had demanded our name cards. We joked about who he was going to lodge an “official report” to. Our colleague? The police? Seriously?! We wished we had come up with a better way to respond to him other than with a smile. We were annoyed as heck because we felt bullied and I hate self-important, arrogant idiots.
So after the movie, I caught him just as he was stepping onto the escalator and said: “I’m sorry but I didn’t catch your name earlier.” He said: “Tony”, and turned away. It was a miniscule victory, but it made me and R feel a little bit better. At least we had a name to the bully. It might not even be his real name but I’d caught him off-guard so I hope it is.
Y, who wasn’t there, couldn’t believe these people were behaving like this over a bottle of wine, and actually, neither can me and my colleagues. It’s only a bottle of wine! To behave so badly and so ungraciously, to embarrass yourself in public like that…
He was the only person making a scene, and he was the only guy up against two other women. I can think of so many ways he could have been gracious. He could have said, that’s alright I’ll let the women have it; or, I can’t say for sure that I was here first so let’s go with the lucky draw idea. I hope none of the three had actually known that they weren’t there first, but were only arguing for the sake of trying to unfairly win a bottle of wine. That would just have been too sad for words. As it is, Tony was already pretty ridiculous. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
