Quick note on feelings and frustration

[H8_Seed]

Okay, I'm a bit steamed so I'll get right to the point for fear I'll start ranting.

Long story short, I got very irritable with some people in the Megaskype and Official chat this evening for what they said about me, and I do want to apologize for my behavior and how I came off. It was not professional or polite at all, and I didn't mean to upset anyone. I haven't gotten much sleep in the last few days, and I'm quitting smoking, so no doubt those are having a major role in deciding my mood currently.

However ungracefully I may have picked my words, though, I was still getting people telling me that I was unjustified for getting upset. When dealing with an angry person, this is a MASSIVE no-no. If i wasn't as good as I am at calming myself down then I probably would have broken something. NEVER EVER tell someone that they are unjustified for feeling upset about something; it only serves to make things worse. When what you mean to say is, "I really didn't mean my message to come across like that," it can turn very easily into, "Why did you see my message that way when I clearly said this instead?" It only made me want to argue and fight, and it really got my adrenaline pumping (something that I hate very much).

I generally consider myself to be a calm, easygoing kind of guy, and it takes a LOT to get me as angry as I am. I'm good at letting things go, however. Just keep in mind that some people aren't very good at letting things go, and their negative feelings will stew around until they do something drastic.

Forgive me if I'm a bit disjointed-sounding, it's 0030 here and I really want a cigarette.

[bartekko]

Megaskype is the /b/ of our community.

If you take it with any dose of seriousness, you're doing it wrong.

Do you think either me or Rainbowdutch were serious with the "Bartekko x Rainbowdutch" shipping?

[Tephnos]

Don't think it was the Megaskype this happened in Bartekko.

[H8_Seed]

Don't think it was the Megaskype this happened in Bartekko.

This.

[Senator Myth]

I wasn't there when any of this happened, and so of course I can't comment on anything whatsoever about what happened...

However, I will comment on the strangeness of bringing this to the forums... It does seem a bit strange to do this without posting any additional information and being all vague about what happened. It seems like this should have been addressed to the Official Chat, or perhaps in PMs. Of course I don't think it's BAD that you posted it here, just that if you wanted the entire community to weigh in on it, you should have posted additional information. And if you don't want to post that information, that's fine too, but in that case it would have been a bit more appropriate to handle this on Skype.

That's just my thoughts though, more like an "in the future do this" kind of thing and not a "YOU DUN EFFED UP BIGTIME"

To everyone reading, please try to treat one another right. Remember that you can always walk away from the computer or close out of Skype if you get upset.

[H8_Seed]

Eh, I'm completely over it and I kind of just want to forget I ever said anything about this, because it's really not an issue anymore

[Navron]

Seems like Skype is fast becoming the root cause of a lot of drama around MLR.

All I can really recommend is a break. I only go on Skype when I've got something I want some feedback on, or I'm trying to reach a specific person.

The times I do go on there to simply be social within the community, I treat it just like a day in my shop, which, if you've ever wondered what an aircrew shop is like...

We have new guys introduce themselves in shop meetings, with senior chiefs, E-6s, a few E-5s (myself), a bunch of senior E-4s, and a few officers.
- Introductions are always started professionally, and then we hit them off-guard with a, "If you had to pick one person in this room you'd like to fuck, who would it be?" This is usually a guy not long out of boot camp, has been a student his entire career so far, and is still deathly terrified of senior E-5s and above.
- It's usually a goal to make each new guy get extremely pissed off or cry. If they do either, we write it down in our own history, make fun of him/her in front of the officers, and sometimes the officers are in on it as well. One guy checked onto the boat, was arrested by the police on the boat, chewed out by the skipper, and subsequently the chief in charge of him. It was all setup prior to him even getting there. Even the boat police were in on it.

Now, why am I mentioning this?

This is our job.

We don't need aircrewmen who are passive, timid people, afraid of higher ranking personnel, and afraid to be made fun of. If we let people be like this, the end result is an aircrewman who is afraid to speak up when a pilot is doing something wrong, or notices something wrong with the aircraft and doesn't mention it to somebody out of fear of being wrong and being made fun of.

In the aviation community, this type of person WILL get somebody killed. It isn't a matter of MIGHT, but rather, WHEN? I know because I WAS that type of person, and my senior shop guys beat that our of me ruthlessly. I've had water thrown in my face, been forced to wear uniforms nobody likes to put on, and got shafted with every crappy watch and every single possible painful drill that could be done in the helicopter.

Who am I now? I'm a senior crewman who isn't afraid to tell a pilot he's a sack of shit that will get us all killed. I'm not afraid to tell a chief, "No, I am not taking this aircraft. This ___ is fucked up, and this bird is DOWN!"

The navy calls this, "hazing."

If I were to get in trouble for hazing a new aircrewman, I wouldn't have a problem with it. They are MY replacement, and I don't want somebody eventually becoming a crew chief who's timid and lacks self-confidence. I had to give a thumbs down to my best friend at my squadron, on his last crew chief board, knowing full well that this was his absolute last try, and if he failed, he will be forced to pick another job. I voted he failed, many others did as well, and he's no longer flying. I've known him for 4 years, since our first training commands, but to put it bluntly, he would have gotten somebody killed, either directly, or as a result of training new aircrewman in bad ways.

This all comes back to the Skype chat, because if you are going to socialize with a bunch of people you don't really know, you NEED to have a backbone. You can tell a ton about a person's character just by how they react to getting harassed, but harassment is different for each person, as in, my idea of a light jab might be deeply offensive to somebody else, and when they react poorly to it, I see them as having very weak self-confidence.

If you can't go on Skype chat without people offending you, then either find a way to not let them bother you, or don't use Skype chat.

Hope this didn't come across as being harsh in any way, but if it does, I guess it kind of illustrates my point.