[SCA-BMDL] courtesy

[Marybeth A Griffin]

In my opinion, doing anything that prevents you from participating
fully in whatever manner an activity is intended for, can be rude. So
if you are at a meeting, and you are expected to listen and remember
what is said, if you do that, what does it matter if you also happen
to be knitting? I know many people, myself among them, who listen and
remember better at a meeting if they have something to do with their
hands. Sometimes it's simply taking notes, but at other times I just
need to fiddle with something.

There are many times where this breaks down. If I become so involved
in what I am doing that I cannot respond or participate, that can be a
problem. If I stop fulfilling the purpose of the meeting, then it's
not helpful for me to be there. 

If I distract the single/few presenters so much they cannot lead the
meeting, then generally I will need to suffer so that the greater will
benefit. Unless I can manage to sit somewhere where I will not
distract them (difficult in general), I'll just have to channel my
efforts into some other kind of socially-acceptable fiddling.

But the difficult question - what if my activity, which makes it much
easier for me to work within the meeting structure, makes it harder
for another person (not the presenter/leader) to participate? Here we
get into the fine line between courtesy and rudeness.

If I can move such that I am not visually bothering the person, and
it's not difficult for me to do so, I will. However, if the meeting is
full, or there is no place to move to, or worse - if the person being
bothered by me is upset simply by *knowing* I would be knitting, out
of sight - then I really don't know what to say. 

By continuing to bother that person, I am being rude. But, by their
being so upset about something that otherwise may not matter, they
also are being rude. Where does the line get drawn?

It's too easy to be overly upset by dealing with this after the
fact. How am I supposed to respond, when I find I've somehow offended
a person? In this case, it will depend entirely on your approach. If
you have been upset for hours, and then dump all that vitriol on
someone atonce, you'll blindside them and fix nothing. In fact, I'm
more defensive when that happens, and less likely to give a person
slack the next time it might happen.

As for myself, I've brought sewing and knitting projects to longish
meetings here at work, and have never had a problem yet. I don't need
to bring work to smaller or shorter meetings, as either I have my
laptop or I'm there for a good reason. The larger meetings are too
easy to be bored in, so having something to do lets me pay better
attention.

I do bring work to my weekly tabletop game, and as Giovanni is running
it, he knows the rule - we can do what we want, but please try not to
disturb him a lot, and make sure we're paying attention. The only time
I managed to disturb him was when I was sitting right next to him
playing a very click-click-click game, and it quickly got on his
nerves. Sadly, the second prohibition happens way too often (yes dear,
I'm trying, you said I've been good lately ;)

Alana