Five Top Reasons to Remember a Conflict is Not a Contest

That's a recipe for "lose-lose"

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Put down the gloves! Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

On Easter, I had brunch with my mom at her assisted living residence. We went to the main dining room, even though at this point she mostly eats in the smaller dining room in her wing. I ordered her a glass of wine; she doesn’t really drink much any more but she likes the idea of being a grown up who has a glass of wine at a holiday meal.

As we sat waiting after ordering the drinks, it became clear that the whole dining room was being “managed” by the teenage waitstaff. We kept waiting - no drinks. I went through the buffet and came back with plates - no drinks. We waited and tried to eat carrots clearly meant to feed bunnies not humans - no drinks. Finally, I flagged down our clearly overwhelmed, very nice waitress and she told me in very roundabout terms that she couldn’t serve my mom wine. She couldn’t really answer my questions and she said I really needed to talk to the supervisor but the supervisor had left for the day. I didn’t even bother to point out it would have been nice if she had come by the table to update us on my mother’s apparent “no wine” status because who wants to make a nice teenage girl cry at her job, especially when there’s a person in a rabbit suit wandering around in the background?

All of this was very irritating. As anyone who has a parent in assisted living knows, these places are more expensive than boarding school. My mom is a few weeks away from turning 94 - how many holidays are left when she is a) here and b) if here, able to come sit in a restaurant like setting for a (sort of) festive meal? Also, surrounding tables of curious oldsters were trying to listen to us; because my hearing is fairly functional, I am at a distinct advantage in working out a kerfuffle. I didn’t want to cave to “the man.” Of course, we’re customers of this place and I also wanted “what we were due.”

But I also knew the problem stemmed from the management higher up (a new group had just taken over the facility and a number of changes were…not great? Carrots used to be edible?). The immediate issue was that it was ridiculous not to be able to get a glass of wine and I was not finishing the meal without it.

At the end, I’ll let you know how this all concluded.

For many of us, when we end up in a hassle or hit an interpersonal roadblock that gets in the way of moving something forward, our first instinct is to bristle. There’s plenty of ways people splinter off after this, depending on the nature of the relationship or what’s at stake or the outside context, but it’s pretty normal for the initial response to be anger or hurt.

Emotions are what they are and they pass through you quickly. One thing I’ve gotten a lot better at over the past three years is letting the emotion do its emotion thing without judgment.