I outlined in a previous post how the student-club where I hang out with friends tends to deal with people who just don’t ‘fit in,’ typically due to behavioral issues, in a sort of cycle. To save you the click,
-The person comes in and rather than sit and watch what’s on the screen, will attempt to strike up loud or unrelated conversation. (If it’s not a ‘noise’ issue we’re dealing with, it can be generalized as something we just find disagreeable.)
-They are asked to please quiet down or leave the room if it‘s really bad. This may happen multiple times before a Warning occurs.
-Feeling like the people who issue the Warning (typically one of the top three officers of the club) are ‘mean‘ or ‘unfair,’ the person being Warned will sit in the back of the room and complain to anyone who will listen about how rude and hateful we are.
-The person being Warned will continue to attend the club, every week, and continue to complain from the back, or carry on having loud conversations or being distracting, and receiving warnings.
-Tension will eventually reach a head, and the person is confronted by our ‘Warden’ - aka, the Officer responsible for dealing with people who are being a constant bother.
-The person storms out and may return at a later date, more subdued, or not at all - though they may continue to complain about us outside of the group.
By this point, we‘ve encountered this cycle enough times that we’ve learned to spot escalation coming pretty early on. Our major concern with any problematic member is to give them as many chances as they can to redeem themselves if they’re being disagreeable and try to avoid confrontation - the last thing we want is to cause people to leave a group where the goal is to just hang out and have a good time.
In any case where we’re having issues with someone, while we may feel bad about having to deal with someone who shouts, swears or threatens to report us to Student Life (for what exactly? Enforcing our rules?), how do we deal with someone who’s only real fault is trying too hard to be friendly?
The current issue is with a guy we’ll call Joe.
