Burning Bridges
The concept of “burning bridges” has been fascinating to me because it’s such a complex social construct. It’s not just the simple act of doing something that severs contact with another party, damaging the relationship so it’s irreparable. There’s a lot of social hierarchy and power involved.
When I was at Red Storm, I had an altercation with some coworkers who were very negative about my job performance (they were not in my department). They complained about me, complained to me, and were generally hell to work around. I got fed up at one point, and someone warned me not to burn bridges. That shocked me. My coworkers didn’t seem to be hesitating on burning the bridge to me. As far as I was concerned, that bridge was gone.
It’s happened again. I was trying to set up a book event at a local store, as my book is coming out in August. Now, you folks know I can handle rejection. I can understand a “no”. What I can’t understand is ineptitude and rudeness. The person who my publicist contacted intended to forward the email to someone who handles events, adding to the email her opinion of my event. Her opinion was not flattering. At all. Instead, she REPLIED to the email, sending her lovely comments back to my publicist and me. When it was pointed out to her, she apologized for sending it to the wrong person - not the words she used.
Once I got over the sting of the whole thing, I just had to laugh. Then I thought about blogging about it, but I don’t want to burn bridges… and that’s when it hit me: that people in power do not burn bridges. They can afford to treat me poorly because as an author, I’m always going to need them (book store events, publicity, whatever). Them treating me poorly wasn’t burning a bridge, but me calling them out online is.
So I’m telling the story - but not the book store name. If you’re local and you ask me, I’ll tell you offline. And I’m not going back to that store again. I have a college buddy who managed to get an event there this fall. I was going to go, but now I just think I’ll buy his book on Amazon.
(or the other indie book store in the area- I do like supporting the local economy, after all)
Originally published at The Murverse. You can comment here or there.