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Experiment 2: Strengths Finder 2.0
TYPE 'A' PEOPLE DRIVE ME CRAZY!!!
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Don’t think that i am missing the irony of the above statement (considering that i myself am Type A).
Brace yourself. I’m about to go off on a serious rant here.
Today I met someone who miraculously knew how to push MANY of my buttons all at once and just set me off. Unusual for a person that i *just met.* This person we’ll call JS for now. JS became my partner for the first project for Instructional Television 2. We made several attempts to meet up without coming to a good time/place. Finally, last night at 11:49 pm, she wrote about meeting today at 4:30 at Starbucks on campus. At 11:51 pm, i replied, saying yes that would be fine.
As i was running to the subway today to meet JS, I realized that I forgot the video that we needed to transcribe, but I didn’t think it was crucial to the work that we had to do since we had both already seen it. So instead of going back, i decided to go for being on time instead, thinking she would be more upset if i was late. (I had already gotten the inkling that she was growing impatient because her last email was very abrupt.) The B train, however, was not going to cooperate with me. I got on board, and what did we do? We sat there for about 10 minutes. Finally the kicked us all off because of a door malfunction in car 3. D’oh! This meant that for SURE i was going to be late at least 15 minutes. But maybe JS would cut me some slack since it was out of my control?
Sure enough, despite all i could do (which is nothing) to urge the train on, I got to West 4th station at 4:36. It took me until 4:44 to finally arrive at Starbucks. I walked in, found JS, and started to apologize profusely, explaining that the train broke down and had me trapped on it for about 10 minutes. I couldn’t call her on the way down because i had no reception underground and I hope she hadn’t waited long.
I don’t think she even heard me. She tore into me about how she had almost lost hope that I was coming because i had never confirmed with her that i was going to be there at all. She had emailed me at 11 and she had been online til 1 am and I obviously hadn’t emailed her back. Confused, I replied, “But i emailed you at 11:51 last night!” Oh, but JS didn’t check her email today, and how could i assume that she would have access during work and class? I figured she had a desk job. Wouldn’t it make sense that she had online access? She then stated that i should have given her 24-hour notice and that such a thing was not too much to ask. 24-hour notice was impossible since she only emailed me about it 16 hours prior to the event.
By now i was getting pretty riled. My replies were in a raised voice and i was not making any pretense of trying to keep things “friendly.” Mostly because she was accusing me of being irresponsible with HER time and HER grade and HER convenience. Didn’t i know better than to email her? I should have called! Oh but wait, she broke her cell phone’s antenna so she can’t get reception in most places. All i can say is, if you want to push my buttons, tell me that I’m NOT all the things I’m trying so hard to be like a) on time, b) not forgetful, c) considerate of others and their time, AND THEN accuse me of being purposefully late because OBVIOUSLY, I CAN CONTROL THE SUBWAY SYSTEMS OF NEW YORK. Grrrrrr…
And then to make things worse, i made a legitimate mistake. I forgot the video, which i told her up front. She just about lost her mind. “How are we supposed to do this assignment then? Sure, YOU have a mental image of what this thing is all about, but what am i supposed to do?” she pointed at me accusingly. She folded her arms and sat back in her chair with a smug yet upset look of righteous indignation. I had no idea what she had planned to do to begin with considering that starbucks doesn’t exactly have a video machine sitting there for public access! I was prepared for what i *thought* we were meeting to do which was to cut up a transcript and paste it together literally, but apparently i was WAY off track compared to what she was thinking. By this time i was upset because i thought that i had just spend about an hour coming downtown only to find that there was NOTHING TO DO.
We finally came up with a plan to get another copy of the video and finish the project. As we walked out of starbucks, it was all i could do to keep my tongue and not give her a verbal lashing for being unreasonable. She turned to me, “Okay, we can’t be pissed at each other if we’re going to work on this together.” I looked at her and said, “I just need some time to cool off, okay? I’m not the one to forget things. I’m also not the one to be late to anything. Just give me some time.”
After that, we were able to cordially finish the project (after she kept me waiting for 40 minutes in the lab watching her stuff while she ‘ran an errand’). It took us 3.5 hours to complete a *simple* assignment. She kept making random notes, trying to bulldoze past my opinion/rationale, couldn’t keep things straight in her head as to which scene was what, and made things way more complicated than they needed to be. And i remained cordially polite the entire time. Woo. Good for me. If only she could have seen the raging storm inside my head.
The entire time, all i could think of was the quote that i put up recently from the book of James. Thank God for all your troubles/trials because they will teach you perseverence and all kinds of other good stuff. I prayed til turned blue.
Man, it’s been a long day.... :(