POKE-ER, or POKE-EE
Saturday, August 27, 2022
Some people poke us.
Not with a stick or a finger – but with their intrusive or rude question, their nudging/noodging us along to action, with a taunt, and sometimes a demand.
It goes like this:
“Where is it?”
“When will I have it?”
“You promised you’d have it to me by now?”
Or, “How is ______ coming along?”
Many pokes, and the poke-ers are far less diplomatic!
And these things, these demands to keep someone else’s timeline or someone else’s recollection of when they thought I’d assured them it would arrive.
Yes, sometimes I’m late or extremely late – and there is always a reason. Sometimes those are just lame, lazy or unjustified excuses. Still, I rail against those who poke. The worst are the ones who do the passive-aggressive versions, the follow-up notes and calls without explicitly mentioning the lapsed deadline, and they call or write several times in one week – which doesn’t seem harsh, but when those calls are from someone who is slow responding themselves and might ordinarily call or write three times a year, it’s particularly galling.
Yes, I still react that way – with visceral anger, but lately, I’ve also been asking myself how often I do the same thing to others. Perhaps more than I should.
My point is this – if we all hate being poked, we could stop that problem if we all stopped poking others; if everybody stopped, it would stop.
To be poked is to be provoked, and we CAN do something about it because not putting a stop to it basically enables the poker-er to continue and perpetuates things for the poke-ee.
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