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Stoning Okay, NZ Politician Says
From the "Things Not to Say" department, a NZ politician thinks stoning is okay, as long as it doesn't happen in his home country. Now there's a platform to run on.
Things you say have consequences, and people analyze them for hidden motives. For instance, are old cell phones really that bad for this African nation, or is this just a grab for bigger bribes? Do these nations want the US out of the region for better security, or to protect their dictatorships?
I know how much a poor-conceived choice of words can hurt. Probably my biggest mistake in consulting came as the result of a completely offhand remark which I wasn't even thinking about.
I was working for a consulting company, and the VP of a certain division had brought me in from another project to work on a high profile team. He already had several project managers and architects on the project, but he wasn't "getting a good feeling" about where things were going, and he wanted me to troubleshoot.
So I go to meet the main manager on the project. I'm waiting in his office, playing with my computer or something, when the guy walks in. He is a very tall person -- probably around six foot six inches or so -- and I was surprised.
"Damn, you're a big f***er", I said.
And that was it. From that point on, he hated me. I shouldn't have used that language; I shouldn't have made that comment. But no matter what I did after that moment, things were not going to work out between us.
So here's a lesson to French leader Chirac, who's getting some heat about his insulting British cooking: it's easy to hurt people's feelings, and very difficult to make things right afterwards.
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