Interactions via hierarchy
In the past year or two, there have been several times when I've attempted to interact with various people directly about things they'd done that I was unhappy with.
(Note: everything here is general comments, stuff that's come up multiple times in a variety of situations. Nothing here is meant to apply specifically to any one particular situation, and it wasn't sparked by anything in particular; just stuff I've been musing about for a while now.)
I hate to involve other levels of power hierarchies when I do such things. If I'm unhappy with a neighbor, in theory I'd rather work that out with the neighbor than complain to the apartment managers or the police. If I'm unhappy with a co-worker who reports to a different manager, in theory I'd rather work that out with the co-worker than complain to their manager, or even to my manager.
I want to treat people as adults, responsible for their own actions. I want to treat people as humans who I can interact with as another human, rather than as interchangeable parts filling roles in a machine. And in my experience, when hierarchies get involved, response tends to be disproportionate. If a co-worker is playing music too loudly, I don't want them to get fired, or even to get a negative performance review; I just want them to turn the music down.
This is particularly an issue when someone really has done something that could get them fired. (Say, a low-level customer service person on the phone starting to yell at me.) Even if I'm very upset about the situation, I'm uncomfortable with the notion of my costing someone their job. It could be argued that if someone does something bad enough to be fired over, then they deserve to lose their job, but it makes me really uncomfortable and unhappy to be the proximate cause of that happening.
So I try to avoid going through the hierarchy. But I've slowly been learning that sometimes the hierarchy is there, at least in part, to protect people. If a co-worker of mine feels that I'm making unreasonable demands on them, then involving their manager can prevent me from making those demands. Involving their manager may also make the manager aware that the person has too much on their plate, and may help them balance the load. And it may replace an implicit and informal hierarchy that can be too easily abused (such as my being in a position of power relative to the other person) with a formal hierarchy that has clearer and more standardized mechanisms. Then, too, involving my manager may let my requests and comments be filtered through a reasonable voice, taking the edge off things I might say in anger or frustration. And so on.
It's still awkward, though. I sometimes feel a little like a jury that's been charged with returning a binary verdict, guilty or not guilty, with no way of knowing whether the sentencing is going to seem reasonable or disproportionate to me.
Anyway, I'm not gonna reach any conclusions tonight. Time to go do some writing.
