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Why Can't We Just Say It?

In the last week or so, I've received a letter and a couple of emails that rankled me a little. They weren't rude or insulting, but they were polite. Very, very polite. Insultingly polite. And polite to the point of meaninglessness. I know--politeness is a quintessentially Canadian quality. But come on. Can't we just get over it?

I'm good at polite. Very, very good. When I owned a business, I wielded politeness like a weapon. Customers who complained, or who were looking for discounts, or who were making requests that I wasn't going to give into--they ran up against my politeness. I never had to give away anything I didn't want to. And I also never had to be rude. Seriously--my politneness is like adamantium (or maybe unobtanium) coated in Teflon.

I should qualify--politeness, in my opinion, is not the same as good manners. Good manners are a code of conduct based on consideration. They vary from situation to situation, and require you to be attentive, and to respond to people in a way that will make them most comfortable. Politeness is also different from kindness, which is based on sympathy, consideration, and a desire to give someone else what they need or want. Kindness and good manners are, in my opinion, closely related. Politeness is a different bird.

Being polite means getting your own way without directly making a request or a demand, and simultaneously making it almost impossible from someone else to deny you what you want. Being polite often means being very, very manipulative. Or, at least, so I've come to conclude.

Back to the letters: the first was a PFO (thanks to Claire for that term. The first word is "Please." It means, "No. Don't bother us any more."). I had applied for a job, and got a very polite PFO in the mail. Nice of them to send it, right? I actually appreciate PFOs, because I tend to haunt my mailbox or Inbox, waiting to hear about jobs I really want. I think that sending a form letter PFO is a very considerate way of telling applicants they don't have to be on pins and needles any more. Except that the PFO was transparently disingenuous. It contained a couple of ridiculous superlatives. Now don't start by telling me that I'm selling myself short. Yeah, I happen to think that I have mad professional skilz. I ran a business, I'm a pretty good teacher, and a good writer, too. (Sorry, is it not polite to say so?) But I'm also realistic. For instance, I don't have my PhD yet, and my only publications are short stories. I also know several people who were probably applying for the same job, and I know that their CVs are a lot sexier than mine. So I wasn't particularly suprised to get a PFO. I was disappointed, yes, but what really rankled me was the blatantly obvious form letter that pretended to address my application in particular. In fact, for a split second, I actually thought that the respondant was making fun of me--"Oh, yeah, you were REALLY qualified for this job. NICE application, lady. We were REALLY impressed." (No, that's not what the letter actually said, that was how I interpreted it on first reading.) So you've got to send a form letter--okay. I get it. A lot of people apply, and it would take years to address each application individually. I don't mind getting a form letter. But please, let's be a little sincere. "Unfortunately, we are unable to offer you a position at this time" will suffice. Add a bunch of silly superlatives about my "exceptional qualifications," and that's just patronizing. The form letter, however, was apparently insufficient, because I also got an equally silly form email PFO. Really? Twice? This is almost as bad as the weird rejection letter I got a few years ago, in which the magazine editor actually wrote, "If you are going to continue in this field, you will need to develop a thick skin." If these aren't form letters, then somebody has started a rumour that I respond really, really badly to disappointment. Like, postal-badly.

Which brings us to the other email. Now, it has taken a few years, but I actually have developed a thick skin, when it comes to rejection letters. I have published four short stories, and two of my plays have been staged. Believe me, I have sent my work out more than six times. In my early twenties, I cried every time I got a rejection letter. I got over the habit. (If I hadn't, I would perpetually suffer severe dehydration.) I know I write well. I also know that publishers get a lot of really good books and stories, and can't run them all. I don't mind form letters, and am actually flattered when an editor takes the time to scrawl a few words that directly address my writing on the little rejection slips. I've received a lot of good feedback that way. Sometimes, editors even suggest other magazines that are more liely to publish my work.

Some friends of mine have received really bitchy rejection letters. One of the Nice Wantons told a particularly gruesome rejection letter horror story. Until last week, though, I've never received anything other than direct, polite (in the best sense of the word) and professional rejection letters. The email I received on Friday, though, was a different story.

It actually began with some very helpful and practical advice, but the message quickly develved into a diatribe about the sender's work load: the number of submissions she receives, why she doesn't have time to read my work, and how I am wasting her time. It was all very polite, mind you. Very carefully-veiled acrimony. She had clearly only given my work a cursory glance--she was even mistaken about the genre. The worst part was, she referred to it as "poorly-formatted." Yeah. She did. Criticize my writing all you want, bitch, but my formatting is impeccable.

Seriously, though, my irritation springs from many sources. First, does she really expect me to seriously consider the advice she provided in the first half of the email, when she went on to give me a dressing-down for wasting her time? We are all emotional creatures, and we are not likely to be particularly responsive to someone who is being acrimonious. If she meant, "Screw you," then she should have just cut to the chase--that's what I read in the email, and I wasn't really feelining like considering the rest of the message. I don't think that's a hyperbolic response, either. Second, she counted the number of pages that I'd written, and conceded, at the very end of the message, that I must be "very passionate to write so many pages." I found that comment condescending in the extreme. I sent her a professional request, from one professional to the next. Whether or not I am passionate or not is a non-sequitur, especially since she announced, at the beginning of her message, that she neither read, nor intended to read my work. Despite her company's policy on receiving unsolicited submissions. Finally, her work load is not my problem. If she feels overworked, she should discuss the situation with her supervisor, and not with me. Why can't people stick to the topic? Don't send me irrelevant information--and don't imply that your workload is somehow my fault, or my problem.

I think the crux of the problem is that people forget that someone--a real person--will be reading the crabby emails they send. Why do we think of email (especially business email) as an acceptable place to exorcise our frustrations? How do we think people are going to respond when we fire off a passive-aggressive diatribe like the one I received? Not well. (But I'll get to my response in a minute.) Honestly, we need to put our need for politness aside for a second. We need to learn to say, "Screw you" (or worse) and mean it. Why veil aggressive, angry behaviour in insincerity? Because, guess what--as soon as we type "screw you!" into the body of a business email, one of two things is going to happen: either we're actually going to communicate our meaning in a clear and direct manner, or we're going to realize how inappropriate that kind of response is, and actually draft and appropriate and professional response.

I blame email and its capacity for almost-instantaneous communication (unless, of course, you're using your Dal account) for a good part of the proliferation of passive-aggressive emails like the one I got. If the individual who emailed me hadn't been able to fire off a message right away--if she'd had to type it out, sign it, find an envelope and a stamp, re-read the message, fold the paper, and place it into the envelope, she might have realized, at some point, that it really isn't appropriate for her to tell me about all the other work she has to do. At least, I like to think that would have been the case.

So. My response to her message. First, my mouse hovered ober the "Delete" icon, then moved over to "Reply." I clicked, and started typing. Then I deleted the whole works. Instead, I opened a word document, and drafted a reply that mirrored, almost sentence-for-sentence, her email to me, in tone and in structure. At one point, she suggested that I enroll in a writing class to learn how to format my work properly. I suggested a Professional Communications course to improve her business emailing skills. I saved it. I brought my laptop downstairs to show Trent. He nearly died laughing.

"Is this someone important?" he asked. "Someone who could affect your career?"

"Not likely," I told him. Really not likely. I had Googled her.

"Then send it."

I did. I felt awful. The email was condescending, passive-aggressive, and impeccably polite. It was dreadful. Just a few hours later, I had a reply. It was direct and assertive. The woman told me that she thought it was terribly inappropriate and bad for my career to suggest that an industry professional enroll in a Communications course to learn how to draft business emails. She also acknowledged that she hadn't noticed that my work was, in fact, formatted according to industry guidelines when she had sent her original email. She told me that, if I hadn't sent such an inappropriate reply, and simply pointed out her error, she might have reconsidered her decision not to read my work. She might have been sincere on that point--but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure my work was in a company recycle bin (or possibly a shredder) long before she emailed me the first time. Of course, I have to tell myself that, or risk regretting my message. All in all, the second email was much better than the first. She addressed only the issues at hand. She told me clearly and without any forms of politeness that she was truly offended by my email. And she even offered some good (professional, and not condescending) advice on navigating the industry. I sent her a sincere email thanking her. I acknowledged that my first reply had been deliberately snotty and condescending, and probably ill-judged, but that I had been responding to what I perceived as a tone of frustration and impatience in her email. I told her that I truly appreciated the advice she had given me. I hope she reads it. She probably won't. It will probably be deleted, unread. That's okay. I know those guys will never consider my work--at least not as long as she's with the organization. But I feel that I've performed a public service. I somehow doubt that the next rejection letter she writes will be as unprofessional, acrimonious, or passively aggressive as the one she wrote me. I hope it won't be nearly as condescending, or as polite.

So. My mission for me: stop being so damn polite. Say, "Screw you" when I mean it. Because if I mean it, I know the message is getting across anyway, not matter how polite I am in trying not to say it.

The Tea Baroness Abdicates

Yesterday, Trent and I made the difficult decision to close the doors of our café, Cargo & James Tea, Halifax. I imagine that our decision comes as a surprise to some of you, and not at all to others. I also imagine that many of you feel that we should have told you personally, and you’re right, but I hope you’ll forgive us, knowing that we would rather not have to tell the story more than once. However, we are very grateful for all of your support, and we want to thank you for helping us out in so many ways: giving us the start-up money we needed, moving furniture and equipment, putting together a safe and giving us a stereo, coming all the way downtown to buy our tea and coffee and teapots and steepers, setting up our bank accounts and lines of credit, working for us for peanuts, sharing your artwork, your music and your poems, not kicking me out of the PhD program or Trent out of the sector council, handing out our coupons and telling your friends and families to stop by the café, coming by to chat with me at work, listening to us gripe, worry, gush, brag and confide in you, helping us navigate the mysteries of Simply Accounting, and not telling us we’re crazy when we told you we wanted to be business people. Thank you so much.

Although, in the last sixteen months or so, the store has been financially self-sustaining, it has just been too much for us to handle. Until very recently, we had hoped to sell the business, and were in negotiations with potential buyers as late as Friday, but when the last interested party backed out this weekend, we decided that it would not be responsible to incur another month’s expenses and stresses. In addition, we have yet to take home a paycheck or any dividends from the business, and after thirty-three months of working for free—and working some very, very long hours—we are feeling the strain. But while the business itself is kaput, Trent and I will be fine. If things go worse than we think they will, though, does anyone want to buy one very small dog? How about one slightly used Baroness tiara?

Although tea wasn’t quite the financial goldmine we had hoped it would be, we are glad that we made this venture. We learned so much, had so much fun, gained experience in business that we could never have had otherwise, and met so many extraordinary people in the process. We have thoroughly enjoyed the last two and a half years as Tea Baroness and Baron.

We plan to lay low for the next week or so—we haven’t seen all that much of each other lately, and it would be nice to see if we still remember how to sleep in—but we know we’ve neglected a lot of important relationships in the past few months, and we want to get in touch with so many of you very soon.

We are, of course, sad about our decision. We will miss our little tea empire, but we are also relieved and excited to focus on other things.