by Ethan Johnson
July 28, 2006

James Woods once said that his villain roles were effective because the character believed in something, however at odds with the sensibilities of, well, everyone else. His portrayal of Byron De La Beckwith in Ghosts of Mississippi is a great example. What's to like about an unflappable racist? In modern times, Fred Phelps serves as an excellent case study of someone who comes off almost cartoonishly hateful, yet is unshakeable in his resolve. Having had my fair share of arch-nemeses, from time to time I reflect on those adversarial relationships and ask, what did these people want?

Some time ago I was saddled with an inter-office rival who really seemed to hate my guts. I didn't really know the guy, but somehow we kept getting off on the wrong foot, and more than once, I had to have closed-door meetings with his boss to try and get to the bottom of what his problem was. We seemed to reach some sort of detente organically (the details escape me), and we didn't lock horns again for a few years, until we found ourselves working on the same team in another department. He sent me a blistering email one day about how "stupid" and "pointless" the departmental newsletter was that I was trying to assemble. Ordinarily, this would have resulted in me forwarding the email to his boss with some comments of my own to grease the "disciplinary process". Instead, I leaned back in my chair and read between the lines. I replied directly to him, and asked, "are you saying that you'd like to edit the 'tech news' section?"

After a short while, his reply came back sheepishly affirmative.

In his case, I became the screen upon which he projected all of his prior frustrations that piled up in the course of him not feeling like anyone was taking any of his goals seriously, and the unfortunate blend of his questionable "people skills". I did him a huge favor by addressing him directly and getting to the bottom of what he really wanted, which had nothing to do with me. The wrong approach would have dug a deeper hole. To this day, his "people skills" have vastly improved and he and I have a pretty good working relationship, although we are no longer direct team members.

I could fill a book with horror stories about another close rival, but I decided long ago to put him behind me and chalk it up to experience. In short, neither of us rose above the BS of the other. He wanted things his way, and I wanted my will to be done. Our working relationship essentially was a game of one-upmanship, straining to the breaking point. He visited my office after we no longer had a direct working relationship and our impromptu hallway meeting was brief and cordial. We're not friends, and neither of us made any overtures to the contrary. But we don't have any direct influence over each other anymore, which at least allowed our interaction to be reasonably pleasant. But what did he really want? Honestly, I still can't quite put my finger on it. Partly, I think he wanted to "just" be lazy and do the least amount of work for the most recognition. I was appalled at how he treated the other people in his office when I came over for a site visit. In turn, I think my approach to departmental interaction and shared objectives/credit made him look bad and he preferred to try and squelch me rather than try new things. But neither of us was asking. Instant conflict.

I get angry with myself sometimes for being baited by an occasional thorn in my side online. And the key is, I choose to get irritated. I know this. But from time to time, I wonder what the person wants.

Regardless of motivation, the fact is that I can choose how I respond to anyone's antics. This includes not responding at all. I call taking the bait "chasing rawhide" in honor of my youngest dog, Petey. Petey can't possibly ignore a rawhide that gets tossed into the room, regardless of how obsessed she (yes, she) is with something else. She'll jump down and at least touch her nose to the rawhide 100 out of 100 times. Yeah, life's too short for that.

Finally, some "enemies" are just friends you haven't made yet. I once had an adversarial relationship with the foreman of the receiving dock of a local hospital. He would loudly tell his crew how much he hated to see me each week and I came through with a delivery. One day, I decided to engage in a little payback (pretty gutsy, doing that to a customer) and loudly shot my voice through the entire lower level of the hospital and opined what a lazy bastard the guy was. We were instant friends after that. He respected balls. <EM>