Today I feel like my baseline has been crossed and I have to take a stand for what I believe in.

Everybody has a threshold that when people cross it, they would wish they haven’t.

I’m usually a very easy going guy that gets along with everybody. Nobody at work would think that I have a tough side that when I got mad hell is breaking loss since I’m always smiling and friendly.

We are working on this big project which involves several teams. This old lady who is at the same level as my boss rank wise would always talk down on our team for no apparent reason than to use our team as a way to vend her frustration with the company politics she has to deal with.  I know she’s working very hard and has to deal with tons of B.S to get things done, but that does not give her the rights to talk down to our team in the meetings.

Today she went overboard and say things like “if you guys know what you are doing, we would be done by now.” She acts in a way that is totally unprofessional; she was extremely irritating and rude to our team by interrupting my teams’ talk time and again. Although I like her as a person but the way she carries herself totally make me lose any respect I have for her.

As she was talking down to our team, I got a little upset and I stared right into her eyes and she looked away and just keeps on talking. As I turned my head and watch the reactions of my other team members, I noticed that they were red in the face and apparently very upset. However none of them say anything and they just bite their tongues. I was thinking “what the hell, you guys are just going to sit there and take this garbage.” I also was wondering why do the elder guys are not saying anything. My boss is also sitting in silent and it looks to me he’s trying to avoid any kind of confrontation. All the respect I used to have for Pete and Mike, all went out the window at that moment. They were as soft as they come. In basketball court, when somebody talks trash to you, you take it to them and show what you could do. If you are just going to take it then guys would think you have no guts and you are a wimp. I am especially disappointed in Pete because he was our leader and he just let somebody else slap the whole team and did not do anything to defend his team. Later on he even gave me the excuse that “some battles are just not worth fighting for.” At that moment, I am seriously doubting that I would get anywhere with this guy as my boss.

Maybe I’m overreacting, but when you don’t stand up for what you believe in and let people push you around, then you deserve whatever abuse you got. I thought that it’s typical that Chinese people is usually quiet and reserve, and always try to be nice and not step on anybody’s toe. I saw someone softer than that today. Not saying anything in my opinion not only negates the hard work that we done for this project, it always sets our team up as the scapegoat when things go wrong.  While we’ve been working hard to help this project, with a soft boss like that if the project succeed that we probably won’t get all the credit we deserve; if it fails guess who is going to be seem as incompetent and surely would be blamed.

It might not be in my best interest to get into a confrontation with this lady career wise, but when she crosses my baseline again, she is going to get it if nobody is going to stand up like a man.