Polarizing Opposition, and the Parting of the Red Sea

I went home, thinking all was well...

The next day started pretty much as usual. Turns out it was anything but usual... I walked in and said good morning to one or two people before I heard a vocal explosion coming from the front two rows of my call floor. I dropped my bag, and immediately headed in that direction. I heard one of the people I selected for the committee state in a loud, exaggerated tone of voice, "If you don't want to make cookies, fine!!!!” That's the only verbatim statement I can remember, but there were multiple volleys of heated dialogue going back and forth between committee members, and the barn bosses.

Mutually Assured Destruction..

The bosses decided they were not going to allow this process to be successful, and had launched a MAD campaign against its success. MAD was a term left over from the cold war, and it stood for Mutaully Assured Distruction. If this projected didn't include them, they would rather see it deystroyed.

I stepped between the two groups giving them both the cease and desist order. I looked like a traffic cop signaling two oncoming, opposing lanes of traffic to halt.

I told them the whole point of the committee was to be a positive, moral building force in the site and was not meant to tear us down, but build us up. I recapped that it was built for the people, by the people. I went to the disgruntled group to isolate what their issue was. Their primary concern was that they were not selected, and with their tenure, felt it should have been them.

I told them that I simply needed a starting point to get the process rolling until the formal election was going to be held. It was true I needed a starting place, but the reality was that I would never formerly or informally promotes anyone from this group into a position of authority or influence.

Their need for drama and conflict over-rode their all ready limited capacities for reasoning. After my explanation, I could see the look of understanding spread over them as I saw their defensive postures relax.



The conflict was over…

I could tell relations were damaged, but it wasn’t until after the first break for me to realize how much damage was actually done. Around 10:30, I walked out of my office and was shocked by the change in the landscape.

After the morning hostilities, the reps decided to segregate themselves from each other. The positive, and neutral reps shifted away from the more negative reps to the far extremes of the call floor, and the negative reps collapsed into a more toxic, poisonous group than before.

The Battle of Good Vs Evil...

It’s almost as if the polar forces took on good and evil magnetism literally pulling their armies of followers apart. The division was so precise it left the entire middle row of the call floor barren, with the exception of one person who was clueless as to why he was now alone.

Moses himself would have been proud of a division so complete. My floor continued to resemble the Red sea until my late shift reps arrived to fill in the void.

There I was, again, starring in disbelief… I had never seen such feelings or sentiment visually defined… As I looked on, I realized again the challenges that were in front of me, and all I head echoing in the background was, “If you don’t want to make cookies, fine!!!”