Preparedness for when

fuddle

Such a good post Lyn. It's incredibly difficult to be in a situation where you have to keep the peace, fix a problem, maintain professional relationships, help someone when it is your job and role to do so and all the while those people are wanting to trip you up in order to feed their own bruised ego. When you have someone like that it's such a battle of wills to act for the good of them on a personal level but on a professional level you have to because if you didn't you're the type of person who would beat themselves up for having failed at your job. Lots you's and yours in there... what I mean is me. This is what I am battling every day in my new role.

I have to behave in that way because I have to keep my job in order to make ends meet so I know that when in conflict I have the ability to turn a blind eye,however difficult that is for me, and act in a manner that is needed.

It is, however, extremely tiring. I question "Is this worth it and should I just quit?" but what would that achieve other than make my life more difficult in other ways.

So the conclusion has to be that I have to work along side these people, help and liaise with these people, even though I don't like them and I know they don't like me, because it would be detrimental to me if I didn't.

I guess what I am saying is that I can see that it happens in my professional role so undoubtedly that is going to be how I would react in terms of survival of any kind... even coping with the negativity of online communities. If I didn't have my online community I wouldn't have my knowledge base and that would be detrimental to my survival. It makes complete sense to me.

Great thought provoking post Lyn and very much appreciated.

[Deleted User]

It's difficult to override being yourself isn't it? To have to think of the greater picture before allowing that first thought to materialise and act on it. I'm realistic enough to know I'm horribly positive in most things, I must annoy the hell out of people who are cross because of the situation they are in through no fault of their own. When DD1 and I got snowed in at Berlin Airport a few years back we were airside with many,many very disgruntled and angry people who were all moaning and groaning and getting very het up with it all and I tried to keep spirits up by being very, nauseatingly cheerful and positive and some folks it worked with but a lot of them got cross with me for not being cross!!! (double cross there) all I could think was that it was a difficult enough thing to have to deal with without being furious with the airport, airlines and weather and was trying to lighten the mood. God knows all the staff were doing their best but it was totally not in their hands. A mass of cross people stuck in a small space is pretty uncomfortable and quite scary, maintaining peaceful relations is only common sense and very professional too!

GreyQueen

One thing I have noticed about situations when I have been thrown together with random people I've not known before, is that a real esprit de corps develops very quickly, especially if hardship is involved. It can feel pretty intense at the time, as if you have formed a mini-tribe, and it goes off just as fast when the situation changes back to normality.

I remember one woman, half a generation older than me, when we were soaked to the skin and exhausted and had been working for 5 days with almost no sleep, reminding me that this horrible experience we were sharing would be food for our anecdotage - it raised a laugh at the time and, of course, she was right.

I've often wondered what would happen in a small group if you had someone who wouldn't pull their weight, or who deliberately did things which compromised the wellbeing of the whole group, such as not maintaining sanitary habits, or slacking off when they were supposed to be on watch? How would that be managed?

Traditional societies have always used exclusion from the group as the ultimate sanction against unacceptable behaviour. But would that be viable where the group in question was already small and vulnerable, rather than a tribal unit with a range of ages, both genders, and different skills? I haven't any pat answers, because unless you have someone who decided they're a dictator and they have henchmen prepared to enforce their will by violence, you have to negotiate these things.

[Deleted User]

Stocks??? Reduction of amenities in proportion to reduction of input/commitment? If you don't forage, cultivate, hunt, prepare,cook you don't get to share the food? If you don't get firewood you don't get to have the benefit of the fire. I guess that might be strong enough medicine to either kill or cure the attitude. If nothing else worked shunning was always a very effective tool, being part of a community would be very necessary to many people under survival circumstances, banishment would be very difficult to achieve, any other ideas?

kezlou

Broad beans?! Hmm greyqueen never actually thought of growing them , partly because I've never eaten them. But if they keep the bee population happy then so am I. That's another item added to the list.
The house were in used to part of farm which used to be a part of a lords estate. Then it became warehouse sites, farmland then a housing estate in the 1960's.

Found all sorts but not neolitch flint, so jealous of your finds.
Congrats with the broad beans!!!!!

Just remembered when we grew pumpkins and butter nut squashes in tubs. Hi t was so funny. They somehow cross breeded and ended up with hybrids called pumpers:o weirdest Halloween pumpkins ever lol

Mojoworking

GreyQueen wrote: »

One thing I have noticed about situations when I have been thrown together with random people I've not known before, is that a real esprit de corps develops very quickly, especially if hardship is involved. It can feel pretty intense at the time, as if you have formed a mini-tribe, and it goes off just as fast when the situation changes back to normality.

I remember one woman, half a generation older than me, when we were soaked to the skin and exhausted and had been working for 5 days with almost no sleep, reminding me that this horrible experience we were sharing would be food for our anecdotage - it raised a laugh at the time and, of course, she was right.

I've often wondered what would happen in a small group if you had someone who wouldn't pull their weight, or who deliberately did things which compromised the wellbeing of the whole group, such as not maintaining sanitary habits, or slacking off when they were supposed to be on watch? How would that be managed?

Traditional societies have always used exclusion from the group as the ultimate sanction against unacceptable behaviour. But would that be viable where the group in question was already small and vulnerable, rather than a tribal unit with a range of ages, both genders, and different skills? I haven't any pat answers, because unless you have someone who decided they're a dictator and they have henchmen prepared to enforce their will by violence, you have to negotiate these things.

Hi greyqueen. I feel the need to reply. In work we are four. A manager and 3 staff. One member has always been carried as was best friends with manager and it was just accepted.

Manager has never been fair. Now those 2 have had a falling out. Neither of us two have taken sides and have stayed out of it.

However I am speaking up when my manager is being unequal as she has problems challenging ex best friend and I am asking for clarification from both awhich is highlighting the unfairness.

Currently she is sending emails to everyone to say x isn't being done so I'm not there to query.

The only person not doing things is her ex besty.

The atmosphere is horrible and the two of us who are not involved are given more and shouted at more by boss who cries too but hard to empathise as she is so unfair. This is just a work situation where I'm drawing a wage enjoy the job and could leave. If it was a life or death I think I'd have been a mutineer defo though.

Ex best friend just doesn't care and although has been wronged recently used to gleefully sh*t on us when besty with boss. Shes struggling with me as when she moans about manager I remind her of equally s h I t t y stunts she pulled when they were in cahoots and she mutters and walks off. Oh for a lottery win . . .

GreyQueen

My most favouritist recent flint tool find is something which I am sure was intended for the same use as a bradawl, for piercing holes in things. Vicious little implement about 2 inches long. There are also lots of little cutting things which sit so neatly between my thumb and first two fingers.

Best advice with broad beans, is to start picking them as soon as the pods are about finger length. You can wait until the pods are bulgy and very beany but you get larger, tougher beans. Better to eat them smaller and more tender. They also freeze really easily; I pod them and put them in placcy bags and bung 'em in the freezer. You can also eat the top several inches of the leaves, lightly steamed, and some schools of thought recommend doing so to dissuade black fly from colonising them.

Broad beans can have an irritating habit of coming atcha all in a rush, which I why I sow some in the autumn, so they'll come ready about a month before the spring-sown ones. Once the broad beans are over, you should be straight onto the runner beans and french beans. Summertime is very beany in my world.

BBs are frost hardy and you can speed up their germination by soaking them for 1-2 days before planting them. I've had pre-soaked broad beans up in 6 days in spring.

It amuses me that broad beans came to the UK about 8,000 years ago and that the neolithic people who made the flint tools I keep finding would recognise them. They had farmsteads where the allotments are now. I can sometimes half-close my eyes and see their conical-roofed roundhouses, imagine the hazel hurdles containing small brown sheep, hear a quern-stone grinding. I bet they were just like us, and they'd be green with envy to see the fabulous steel gardening tools we have nowadays.

Of course, those people wouldn't recognise the New World veggies like spuds, tomatoes, runner beans, or carrots (came from Afganistan, they were white until Dutch plant breeders made them orange). Not sure about provinance of beetroots, chard, parsnips and turnips, anyone got an idea.

Mind you, they wouldn't have had stinging nettles as I think we have the Romans to thank for that little acquistion. But I eat the new shoots in spring, they're full of iron and very good for you.

[Deleted User]

And if you leave the nettles to gorw hairy and hoary in their old age you can extract the fibres, make some cord and knit yourself a vest!!! Obsessed? Me? Never!!!

The flint flakes with the little hook at the front of the blade are the very best boning knives I've ever used, nice to be able to say I made mine too!

GreyQueen

:eek: Lyn! I knew you were a bit older than me but I had NO IDEA you were around back in the New Stone Age.................!

I'm sure I saw something in a Nat Geo mag many years ago about a surgeon who operated on a patient using flint tools found in America or Canada. Apparently, they were just as sharp as scalpels.

[Deleted User]

Flint really is magic stuff, I boned out a shoulder of lamb with one of the little hooked flakes when I did my stoneage cooking day, the sharpest and most manoeuverable blade I've ever used, I kept it and it's upstairs in my prepping things as a back up for a blunt knife.