(Some details I forgot to say: the cocktail was in big garden. it was summer time. people where waiting around a table to have their glasses refilled)
Please enlighten me.
I have 2 scenarios - either he stole or he was playing tag. If he played tag, threatening is wrong.
If he stole, what exactly should I have apologised for ?
- letting him steal from an open bar ?
- letting him run away with what he stole ?
- daring to catch up with him ?
- smiling to him ?
- asking him to fill the empty glasses of the people around him with the full bottle he stole ?
For god sake, he was no hobo but a kernel hacker invited to a conference!
I believed it was a dare - like playing tag. Maybe he did believe otherwise - but why exactly would you take a full bottle from an open bar and run around laughting?? But when confronted I repeat in a non threatening way, why try to escalate instead of going back to normal mode and sharing with the folks having empty glasses around?
I mean it's an open bar. You are not paying per drink, but that's not a reason to grab a bottle and run away or like come with a big back and fill it up as in a supermarket.
That's rude. Following up with threats of violence now crosses my line of "non acceptable behaviour".
How did you "catch" him? If you grabbed onto him a certain way it could have been a trigger for PTSD behavior from a similar thing someone did to him in a fight or something.
I encountered a person with very similar behavior at a party once. There was a bunch of horsing around in a mosh pit sort of thing and this other guy grabbed onto him from behind. He flips the other guy over his back and slams him onto the floor so hard the other guy's ankle literally breaks in two.
Be careful with doing things that may potentially be seen as aggressive to other people, your story could have turned out worse.
For the record, the guy with the broken ankle wasn't angry about it, and there's now a pretty cool photo of the broken ankle on the Internet (I mean it literally got broken in two - his foot was fully separated with the bones sticking out). I talked to the PTSD guy about it later. He was defensive and wanted to kick my ass at first, then he also told me about the rough things that happened to him, and then we shared some drinks. He was on ok guy otherwise.
In your case I'm not sure trying to get the guy kicked out would have been the right thing to do. It would have probably escalated a situation that he didn't intend on creating and wasn't consciously responsible for. Handling it so that the guy would have calmed down instead of threatening people would have been better for maintaining decorum and for helping the guy get over his PTSD.
Honestly I can't remember about how. I think I might have tapped twice on his shoulder but I'm not sure. Anyway it was during the following conversation that it happened - when I asked to share the wine and that I remember quite well.
The situation you describe looks like an honest mistake to me - being grabbed from behind is weird. I wouldn't blame him for reacting and hurting the grabber while he was simply slamming him onto the flow. Bad things happen.
But later on, the guy is still threatening you? To me, the honnest mistake apology is gone. PSTD my *ss - he's abusive. I wasn't there and can't say for sure but to me that's totally different.
Oh no, he was doing it totally indirectly - like, sizing me up while being defensive. I guess that's not being threatening, but only after the interaction I realized that he was really preparing a plan for how to kick my ass in case I did anything wrong, until I calmed him down. It was also pretty appropriate for the setting.
So what's your plan? Should someone like this do as he please, regardless of the consequences for the others? That's exactly the attitude the article attacks!
To follow up on the original subject, let me rephrase what I understood from your one liner: "maybe the female attendees, by daring to show up in non-unattractive clothes, provocked the gropings". Sounds acceptable to you? Not to me.
> To follow up on the original subject, let me rephrase what I understood from your one liner: "maybe the female attendees, by daring to show up in non-unattractive clothes, provocked the gropings". Sounds acceptable to you? Not to me.
Huh? I'm saying physically attacking someone (if that's what they perceive) may result in the same.
I think that's fairly obvious, so I've reported your comment.
