People with the power to..

No, not that endearing bunch of under threes; they already rule the world, but that ever expanding army of bullish grown-ups who should know better.
These people lurk in public places waiting to pounce. People with the attitude that if they don’t use it they’ll lose it. Their verbal gymnastics, tantamount to bullying.
They operate by engendering fear, hopeful of keeping the masses in theirplace.
Meet the usher. Last week, along with a few hundred other shareholders, I attended the AGM of a well respected Australian company. The venue, a Sydney icon. The registration staff went out of their way to be obliging. The ushers, their day/night job being to show people to their seats, must have misinterpreted their brief.

Someone’s Uncle Bob and Aunty Jane came down from Gosford (some 50kms up the coast). They’d woken at five, had an early brekkie, caught the train, and arrived in the city ready for the action.
They made their way to two seats, ten rows from the front – ideal to see and to hear the proceedings. So far so good. Just as they were about to settle in, an officious usher screeched “You can’t sit there, those seats are reserved for microphone participants only”. With no suggestion of alternative seating offered a much chastened, Bob and
Jane headed for the Gods. May this usher not find a seat waiting for him in heaven.

A volunteer (of the domineering kind), at a prestigious gallery, on guard at an exhibition entrance (unlike the usher she wasn’t being paid to be officious)
Unaware that it was a paid exhibition I strolled in. A distant voice shouted – “you can’t just walk in without a ticket, go back to the information desk and buy one”.
Not to be outdone by her upstairs mate, a downstairs dragon, in response to my comment “I’m going to get a coffee and will be back shortly” retorted “well you can’t bring your coffee in here”.


A librarian. Libraries generously offer free internet research time. A quick glance sideways and it’s obvious that there’s not much ‘pure’ research going on at this library. A Nintendo type game; travel bookings; dating sites being given the once over, and the GP’s nightmare,
on-line self diagnosis. Not exactly confidential or precious stuff.
Here I encountered a particularly pushy librarian, one who took it upon himself to monitor the print outs. Having made the unforgivable mistake of helping myself I was told in no uncertain terms “don’t ever do that again, we are holding confidential stuff for other people”. Funny that –
the reception desk was littered with thesesupposedly, “confidential” printouts for all to see.

There are polite ways of rebuking people without reducing them to road kill.