I recently had the odd experience of reading an obit of someone who was once — so briefly, so many years ago — unkind to me. Her obit made her sound really nice. Obits tend to do that, as they should. The thing is, I’m pretty sure the person in question thought I was so stupid, so naive, so without redeeming value that I would not actually understand that she was running me down to my face. She thought that her contemptuous insults were coded, over my head, a joke to be shared with the other two people present.
Just last week, someone introduced me to the idea of “mean up” and “mean down.” Well, it wasn’t the idea that was new, but the expression, mean down, a term for those who cultivate people of equal or greater stature, while unleashing rudeness on those that they consider below them. No one on the planet would admit to being “mean down,” but my hunch is that almost everyone has at least one or two less-than-stellar moments — snapping at a store clerk, getting frustrated at the post office, ridiculing a newbie.
Now I have this obit in front of me, in which people say the person I remember as cruel was intelligent, kind and compassionate. Are they being polite? Did I catch her on a bad night? Was it all in my head, a product of a raw, insecure young woman who was, in fact, in over her head?
I don’t know. But it occurs to me that if one is very, very vigilant about never being mean down, then one might have the solace of knowing that a near stranger won’t read one’s obituary and think: “What a sad premature death, although I remember her as a real bitch.”
Stories about mean up/mean down, or even one’s own fleeting moments of bitchery in the comments, please.
(P.S. I’ve been very careful here NOT to give any details that would reveal the subject. But, given that the mystery community is mourning the death of Barbara Serenella — and, on many blogs, encouraging organ donation, as Barbara died while waiting for a liver transplant — I want to be clear that it’s not her, or any other novelist. I have lovely memories of Barbara, but the stand-out is watching her win the Anthony just last fall. I can’t imagine that Barbara ever had a mean-down encounter with anyone.)
If it makes you feel better, Wally Lamb says that Judy Regan was really nice, too.
I had someone tell me once that “you know you’re a success when you’re bored by the people you used to be in awe of.” That’s a pretty good general-bitchy example of “mean up.”
And I’ve been responsible for more “mean down” behavior than I care to admit. Usually to clerks, and rarely justified. Ugh.
I run a Facilities / Real Estate / Admin Services group for an investment management firm, which means, among other things, that mail and reception report up to me. You want to separate the wheat from the chaff, watch how people behave toward the guy who brings their mail, then watch how they behave when they see someone who can help their career in the elevator.
In my little world, we call this being a KUPD, pronounced “cupid”. The letters mean “Kisses Up, P*sses Down”. Our CEO is very much not a KUPD, so when people are jerks, I notice, remember, bide my time, then find a way to make sure he knows who’s naughty and who’s nice. Don’t know if it damages their careers, but it makes us all feel better.
Having been a waitress and bartender myself, I’m pretty good about not being mean down. The exception is when I’m the victim of intentionally bad service. Then I let ‘em have it.
Being mean up happens when, again, someone is mean to my colleagues, or is a pain to deal with. I express my displeasure by giving them rotten office space. It’s worlds of fun
A person who has never, ever had a bitchy moment is… nonexistent. “Everybody does it sometime” is no excuse, but, really, everybody does it sometime! I’ve had people be nasty to me in one encounter, then delightful and friendly in the next. That’s confusing, and it warns me that I have to keep my guard up with those people ALL the time, but I chalk it up to human nature. I don’t forget it, but I try not to let it worry me. As for my own behavior, I find I have more patience now than I used to have, probably because I’m less frustrated by life in general. I hope I will never be inconsiderate of an aspiring or newly published writer. I spent too many years struggling to get published to ever forget how it feels.
I worked at the airport for 13 years, and as a copy clerk at a newspaper. I was a victim of “mean down” way to many times to mention. Of course at the airport I could take action. Anyone that was really mean to me got the seat next to the lady with the screaming baby and crying toddler, among other things. I know skycaps that would check baggage to a wrong destination. When you are a victim of the “mean down”, you find ways of mastering the “mean up”. Of course we call it “getting what they deserve.” It taught me try and be nice to service people, they have more power then you think … and they laugh about you behind your back.. at least we did.
Freshmen orientation for Engineering students, 1965, guys to girls: “Why are you taking a space in school from some guy who will have to support a family some day?” [I'm still supporting myself.]
Co-worker (my junior), supervisor (but not mine), when I asked to be shown how she did something (because she was leaving for another job and our sr. manager had asked me to): “This is too complicated for you to understand.” [She never would show me and I figured it out myself after she left.]
I have probably said something to others, although I can’t think of anything intentional at the moment. I really try not to behave that way, but I think it’s human nature to remember the slights to us and not the ones we’ve perpetrated on others.
The worst mean-down people I ever worked for were publishing types in NYC, at a book catalog in the early nineties. One of them died last year, and was fondly eulogized in the NY Times as being thoughtful, supportive, kind, warm… etc. I remember her as being a shrieking nasty corrosive harpy to everyone she came into contact with. She threw things at people, aiming for the head–like mugs of scalding coffee. She screamed. She taunted. She ripped up people’s work and threw it on the floor and stomped on it. She was just a hideous little bitch, for no reason.
Her ex-husband–my boss’s boss– was even worse. I met someone years later who’d also worked for this guy, and said of him, “ah yes, BLANK, the man whose name cannot be used in a sentence without the addition of the word ‘pig.’”
I’m sure he’ll have a hugely laudatory eulogy in the NYT too. The shithead.
I have two comments:
1. Eulogies like this are one of the reasons the Episcopal Church doesn’t DO eulogies.
2. My late mother-in-law was an expert at mean down. Especially towards me. She was a mistress at the kind of insult that no one else would even catch. You would be the only one in the room who knew you were being cut down.
I was always reminded of the Billy Joel song, “Stiletto”, “She’s so good with her stiletto, you can’t even see the blade.”
Thank God, she and I worked out our differences, as we lost her 5 years ago to lung cancer, and I can honestly say I miss her every day.
I, myself have a problem with blatantly STUPID people. I cannot avoid the mean down with them. I don’t mean people who know their limits. I am referring to the idiots who think they are smarter than they are. I can’t resist the insult that goes right over their head. Mea culpa. I am a bitch.
Ann-Marie
I have no problem admitting I’ve been mean down. In fact, I keep John and Dave around specifically for that purpose. But I also work in technical support, so I am invariably the victim of mean downs on a daily basis. Damn karma…
A digression, but I’m going to try for some Nice Up here. Or maybe it’s Nice Down. At any rate, I’ll be posting this link — http://www.ruminator.com/?p=130 — to my website in a few days. It’s a great short story and I know about it only because the writer Tom Franklin made sure that everyone at a recent conference got a copy of the book.
I love learning new terms! As a life long sarcastic smart ass, I think I’ve mastered both the mean up and mean down. It’s just that mean up(s) have to be couched more carefully (“I was kidding!” being a favorite of more than one person).
Lord knows, I’ve got a temper (shocking to most of you, I know). But like Rae, I’ve worked as a waiter and bartender before, so I try to observe whether a customer service person is really doing the best they can or if they’re just blowing me off, and I try to reserve the “mean downs” for the latter. The operative word there is “try”.
As for “mean up”…I don’t need it. Experience has taught me that karma is my friend. Everyone who’s used a position of power to screw me over has come to disaster, and I’m not talking small ones. I’m talking business failure, disbarment, indictment, etc. Ergo, I also do my best to stay on karma’s good side.
The biggest problem I have with mean down is dealing with telemarketers. It’s hard for me to separate the rudeness of the telemarketing companies and the low wage workers they use to make the calls. I’d keep them talking, while letting them know I wasn’t really going along with the program. I’ve had them yell at me at the end of a call, “You’ve been wasting my time” and slamming down the phone. Go figure! I’ve been working at a different approach. On a recent one, I was explaining the scam to the telemarketer and saying that she should be participating in the process. She apologized and said that she lived in rural Tennessee and that there just weren’t any other jobs. She said she hoped they weren’t monitoring her calls. That helped to reinforce changing my behaviour towards telemarketers.
Regarding Barbara Serenella, I think she made a point of deliberatly shocking people, though to a good result. I remember her being on a panel at the LA Times Festival of Books, with Chris Dardon, the OJ Simpson Prosecutor. After that case he started writing and working as a Defence Attorney. At one point in the pannel, Ride Alongs were being discussed and Barbara said that they were cool and that it was the first time she got to ride in the front seat of a cop car. Darden had his chin literaly on his chest for several minutes in dismay. I imagine that even though he works with criminals, he hadn’t considered himself a peer with one, before.
Another time she was speaking at a big literary luncheon. In attendance was Sibyl Brand, who is a huge philantropist in Southern California and has the woman’s jail named after her in Los Angeles. At the end Barbara refered to her and said that she was one of the only people there who had been in the inside of her house, refering to the jail. I think Barbara did those kind of things to show that there could be redemption and to show that someone who people admired could come from a checkered past. It was definitly shocking to some, though I don’t think it would be considered mean. I can’t think of many otehr people who have done this. I know that she changed me and that I’ll miss her.
Don Cannon
I am very nice to telemarketers, but they make it hard sometimes. Recently, Sears called me and I said, as I always do, “I’m sorry I just don’t buy things over the phone.” The man said, “I don’t want to sell you anything . . . I just want to tell you about some remarkable Sears appliances.”
For the most part, eulogies are supposed to be erring on the side of laudatory (I remember all the nice things said about Nixon after his death, and wondering what the talking heads and obit writers were smoking.) And the mean up/mean down concept is dead on – crap on those below you and karma usually bites you back. I always figure fortunes will change for anyone so better to err on the side of respect if possible.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t lapse, and I freely admit, like Ann-Marie, to having little patience for stupid people. Or the willfully ignorant. If you’re open minded and curious chances are you’re a lot smarter than most of us, no matter what station in life, but otherwise, nope.
We know the real reason Bryon keeps us around. To explain to him what phrases like “Donkey Show” means so he can write stories about them.
I can’t believe I’m getting into an insult match with Bryon on the comment thread of a blog post asking us not to insult each other…
Sigh…
I need to grow up.
Good points, Keith. I also think that the whole mean-up versus down issue gets complicated, because sometimes the perspective isn’t clear.
In some ways, a telemarketer or cashier is above you, because he’s the one actually controlling your fate for at least the next few minutes. I remember my brother being out to dinner on a first date with a woman he really liked. At the end of the meal, he mistakenly handed an expired credit-card to the waiter, who took great satisfaction in standing over the table and cutting it in half with a pair of big scissors. Who exactly was “up” and who “down” in that scenario?
So when people paint that target on their foreheads, the rules are different. What I was thinking of, though, were things like yelling at the flight attendant because the jet is stuck behind twenty-seven others on departure. The sort of “humiliate the person who can’t fight back” behavior that seems to give some people so much pleasure.
Most of my working career’s been split between Washington, DC and Los Angeles, and in both of those places, KUPD (I love that, Rae!) is an art form. What’s weird is that EVERYONE starts with the same crummy jobs — receptionist, legislative caseworker, mail clerk — so it’s amazing to me that people seem to feel obligated to treat those coming up behind them just as badly as they were treated themselves.
It comes around, though. I remember the day after election day, 1988. The Chairman of the House Banking Committee, Fernand St. Germain, had just lost his campaign for reelection, and was facing possible criminal charges after 20 years of running that committee like his personal fiefdom.
I was sitting with my boss in a conference room when the receptionist buzzed in to say Chairman St. Germain was on the phone. “Tell him I’ll get back to him,” my boss said. As far as I know, no one took Freddy St. Germain’s phone calls that day.
In a fit of frustration for answering the phone without checking the caller ID, I told the telemarketer that I wished they would stop calling my da*m house trying to sell me things I didn’t want. The telemarketer then told me to go fu*k myself. Well, that response was so surprising, shocking that I had to laugh at what I call instant karmic repayment.
This response to a telemarketer was a departure from my usual friendly turn down. The lesson? Be respectful to your telemarketers or they might curse at you.
I think there is also mean across. People that find it difficult to deal with others in the same position. I see it at the university with two professors hired at the same time and feeling competitive. Or two writers starting out at the same time. Sometimes its easier once you find them up or down and not across.
Yes, mean can go in any direction, sad to say.
I just came back from a week of teaching at Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise conference and I addressed the subject of envy versus jealousy. I told my students that envy was, in fact, natural — who wouldn’t want to enjoy great reviews, big advances, all the other nifties that publishing can bestow? But jealousy is destructive and benefits no one. (Envy, for that matter, has to be kept in check. But if you pretend you never, ever feel it, your head might explode from denial.)
I’ve had a lot of scut jobs. I was an enlisted man in the Army. I’ve worked construction, tended bar, and for about three hours I was a telemarketer in NYC. So I don’t do mean down, not intentionally, I don’t.
I am impatient with people who are rude, arrogant or intentionally obtuse. For instance, in frustration I once asked a young art director who worked for me, “What’s it like to be that stupid? Is it like being drunk all the time?” I regret that to this day, even though it happened 15 years ago.
And I’m too lazy to do mean up.
I think that all of us who ever worked retail have an obligation never to be mean down. It’s a karma thing…and something like breaking a cycle of abuse as well. (It happened to you, so you inflict it on the next generation.)
A momentary flare-up is forgivable, because we’re only human. But a repeated pattern of taking it out on people with no ability to defend themselves scars the soul.
P.S. Loved your comment above, Cornelia! My wife, who’s a book editor, had a boss like the one you describe. His preferred flung weapon was an uncapped pen, but he’d use whatever was handy. Never scalding coffee, though, so I guess there are degrees of evil.
I think I’m mean-360. I go out of my way to be polite-down, but down doesn’t earn you a pass on showing me the same courtesy.
Telemarketers? Fair game. That’s not “down.” You pester me at home while I’m trying to get things done, and you get whatever I feel like dishing out. Usually it’s “No thanks” and a hangup, but if you’re going to intentionally be a jerk (and I don’t care, in the least, that intentionally being a jerk is your job), you’ve painted a target on your forehead.
I’ve done retail, pumped gas, and dug ditches. There’s “down,” and then there’s “you volunteered for this.”
I just experienced mean-down today, in fact. I work for a very interesting woman, who is Japanese…and Swiss, interestingly enough. She is a japanese woman, but she was raised in Switzerland, so not only is there a severe language barrier, but the way in which she responds to things can really come across harshly, when she honestly doesn’t intend it to. It took me years to figure this out, and just this year I was chatting with her while she visited Chicago, and she said: “I grew up with all brothers, and we just say what we mean and don’t worry about others’ feelings. I don’t always remember to be kind when I say things, because it’s just not in my DNA.” And suddenly, the world made sense. I think sometimes we can misinterpret mean-downs as utterly cruel, when maybe there is a more reasonable explanation.
At least, I can pretend there is, in my head.
It makes me feel better.
A bit off topic, but just a bit.
I’m currently reading The History of Reading by Alberto Manguel and the day after I read this post I came across this paragraph in it:
“After his [Cyrillus] death in 444, one of the bishops of Alexandria pronounced the following funeral eulogy: ‘At last this odious man is dead. His departure causes his survivors to rejoice, but is bound to distress the dead. They will not be long in becoming fed up with him and sending him back to us. Therefore, place a very heavy stone on his tomb so that we will not run the risk of seeing him again, even as a ghost.” The History of Reading, p. 204
It is frustrating to see someone you know to be evil being honored as if they were Mother Teresa. I was surprised a couple of years ago by a front page article in the newspaper honoring the worst boss I have ever had. This shrivelled up lump of malevolent rot was one of the most sadistic people I think I’ve ever met, and the article portrayed him as some kind of saint. This was a man who used to talk about his time torturing the Japanese in World War II with a sparkle in his eye. He was mean every which way he wished.
I’m just waiting for the creep to die so I can go piss on his grave.