Fit to print

I just had a weird role reversal on the phone with my mother.  She was telling me about some crazy beotch from her work who tore her head off when my mother suggested that she might stop looking at wedding gowns online and finish up her work at the end of the day.  Because doing your job is optional, apparently.  So she tears into Miss Jean and Miss Jean, being who she is, writes this girl an email apologizing for her 'lack of tact' (read: telling the truth).  And I don't know why, but this huge surge of protectiveness welled up inside of me and I basically lectured my mother for ten minutes on the importance of keeping that kind of discourse in person and OUT of email, lest someone try to use her well-intentioned email against her.  

When I write emails to faculty about the DMA, I usually CC it to about four people - advisers, administrators, department heads, etc. because I know that information needs to be seen by multiple people and they all need to see the same text.  I also do this to cover my own ass, lest someone say, "but that's not what you said to so-and-so."  Especially useful when negotiating things, the e-paper trail has become a way of life.  And my poor sweet mother is just the type of person to put her do-gooder self in jeopardy by apologizing to some accounting tartlet who really doesn't care about her job, nor does she care about her relationship with Miss Jean.  

I kept telling her I just don't want her to get hurt.  I don't want someone to manipulate her words.  This is the danger with email: there is no context, there is no tone, no inflection.  

I think I hurt her feelings.  I know I hurt her feelings.  And after it was all said and done, I found myself apologizing if I came across as harsh.  For all of her smarts, Miss Jean genuinely believes in the good in people.  This unfortunate gene was also passed on to me, and my sweet husband frequently tells me to stop doing those things I do like talking to strangers, trying to build bridges with difficult colleagues.  Things that I do instinctively, but don't really have anything to do with my work.  

How do open-hearted people survive in this world?  I'm at this great opera company with wonderful colleagues right now and I'm almost dreading going anywhere else, lest the colleagues be not as nice, the staff not as helpful or solicitous.  I'm now spoiled for other companies, and I don't want to go.  And my poor mother, now probably sniffling quietly because I yelled at her for being too nice, is surrounded by these young sharks who are just interested in their own lives, their own careers, and I don't want her to get hurt.  

I don't want to get hurt either.

Sigh.