Posts
Let’s talk about passive-aggressive power. Lots of people feel powerless and angry about it. To be honest, powerlessness breeds anger. Whether with your supervisor at your job or in your relationship with your mate or just in general, you can feel like nothing you do makes a difference.
This is often the thinking behind destructive, illegal behavior. If nothing you do in a positive vein seems to change your life experience, you tend to do the negative thing that gets you the most bang for your buck. This is why inner city youths stray to the dark side. Everyone needs to feel they have power in some way. If you can’t be the best, you’ll find a way the best way to be the worst.
Look around you, most of the human behaviors that drive you nuts can be traced back to the individual’s feeling of powerlessness.
I was once held hostage in a fast food restaurant’s drive-thru, not with a gun, but with a car that blocked the way. If you’re one of the millions who occasionally gets food from McDonalds or Taco Bell or Jack-In-The-Box, you probably know the structure of the drive-through. A lane with a curb on both sides runs along one side of the fast food restaurant. At the beginning of the lane is a speaker—a squawk box—into which you speak your order. A pimply kid inside the restaurant takes your order, tells you how much it’ll cost you and directs you to drive around to the pick-up window.
On the hostage occasion, I once sat two cars back—blocked in by curbs and landscaping and the cars that kept pulling up behind—while the person at the front of the drive-thru refused to move. Maybe they hadn’t been given mustard. Maybe they were over-charged. Apparently, there was something about their order that wasn’t to their liking. For over thirty minutes, the driver refused to move, blocking the drive-thru. Trapped, hungry people behind him fumed, occasionally honked their horns and swore dark consequences on his head.
I’m sure the fast food manager and the employees were going nuts. The driver blocking the drive-thru clearly wanted to force them to hear him, to pay attention to his complaint.
Have you ever driven down a side street, only to have to slow to a stop when an individual--obviously aware that you were there--strolled slowly across the street? This is a form of passive aggressive power. The individual crossing the street, ignoring the traffic right-of-way, is gambling on a near-certainty. You’re not going to run him down. You’re going to sit, fuming, while the jay-walker enjoys a brief moment of power.
It’s probably all he or she has.
Human beings need a sense of personal power. You need to feel like something you say or do makes a difference. Even when the situation is very, very small. People who feel powerless engage in bizarre, seemingly-pointless displays that they can impact others in some way.
Power.
It is a vital need and can lead the seekers after power to do despicable things…like going below the speed limit in the left hand lane while cars pile up behind.
The next time you find yourself tripping over an individual making a passive-aggressive power play, before you give that person a middle-finger salute, remember this may be the only way he feels he can impact the world.
Feel some compassion while you're swearing at the delay.
