I
truly went into this with an open mind. But that did not prevent me from even
attempting to hide my displeasure with things that pissed me off. The very
first was the seating arrangements – chairs were set out in a horseshoe shape
and really, really close together. Almost as soon as I sat down, I said
something about how close together they were and Mr. Clean grunts
“There’s going to be a lot of touching over the next couple days.” A little
later, we had to write some notes on a particular subject and then get up and
make a little speech. Halfway through mine I paused because I had run out of
things to say but I did not want them to know that, so I said, “Gosh, well, I
did write more on the subject but when I tried to read back my notes I could
not understand my handwriting because these chairs are so close together.” (I
know, super passive-aggressive of me.)
Then
one part, we once again had to go up to the front, this time in pairs, and embarrass
ourselves demonstrate our leadership skills by pretending we had won $50
million dollars (after tax). When the last pair finally got up there Mr. Clean
told them that they had chosen to go last and made them take a vow that they
would never go last again. This royally pissed me off because, no, they had not
chosen to go last, they had been beaten out by others who were faster and/or
closer. The only way they could have gone before would have been to resort to
physical violence and cause bodily harm to their teammates who made it up front
before them. Mr. Clean would also tell us all after we had attempted whatever
ridiculous thing we had to do that we had chosen to fail. Um, no, it is your
opinion that I failed, I did my best, just because you didn’t like it does not
make it my choice to fail. And those of us not embarrassing ourselves
attempting the task had to vote on whether the person had passed. Without exception, Mr. Clean said that they
were sympathy votes and he dismissed them. It got to the point that I told him
I was no longer voting because he would just override our votes anyway.
And
a couple of times I could not help but laugh out loud at some ridiculous thing.
For example, at the end of each session we had to do a closing circle in which
we all linked arms and repeated some sort of positive affirmation. The first
time this happened I started to hear music in the background. It eventually dawned on me it was the
Chariots of Fire instrumental. Holy eff. That music is cheesy at the best of
times but in this situation it was just ridiculous. Then another time, when we
had to stand up and introduce ourselves, one man stood up, said his name and
then added, “And I’m an alcoholic.” It took me a second to get it but when I did
I could not help but bark out a laugh, it was so funny given the situation. But
Mr. Clean obviously did not find it funny, he had a look on his face that could
have frozen an ocean.
And
at the end of each module, we had to write a report. The paper was returned to
us with comments. My first came back with a note saying I had to fill up the
lines and marked up like this:
WTF?
Now, I can understand if someone is using that technique to pad out their
report (it had to be a certain length) but in my case it was just where a word
ended and it was natural to write the next word on the next line. So the next
report I produced, this is what I did:
Because
fuck them, that’s why.
