[Hitch]

Hi, guys:

Yes, of course. I try to be nice and firm. (Like a nice plump plum, ha!). I will confess, however, that I have a tendecy to "over-explain" using chronologies.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I grew up (by which I mean, my professional growing-up. From my 20's -->) running legal teams and handling a lot of matters that worked like legal issues. For example, entitlements (water rights, zoning, that type of thing). Thus, I learned early on: tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.

That persists in me to this day. (After all, I've only been out of that world since '08.) I know that many people find my writing hard to suffer. Especially people that are flibbertigibbets. I tend to explain things sort of : this is what I'm going to explain; explanation; this is why it matters. End of letter.

So...a lot of people find my explanations offensive. I don't necessarily mean for that to happen. But when a conflict arises (like the one I've just bitched about), my response is pretty much always: explain why there's a conflict, in brief; explore the conflict chronologically (You wrote this. I responded that. You then said X, to which I replied Y, with dates for review purposes), and then say so, that's why this occurred.

Regular folks don't "work" like that, it seems. They don't like plowing through "A caused B, B caused C.." and they don't like to find out that they had any part in an event that they are now complaining about.

Sorry...that's a poor explanation. But...eh, screw it. You are, of course, both utterly correct. Polite, brusque and firm. ;-) Thanks.

Hitch