I worked with a co-worker for over 30 years that I viewed as a second father, easy going, never frazzled. One of the most important lessons he taught me was to go with the flow. Whenever he was confronted with a task that seemed utterly ridiculous, his standard answer was “it all pays the same”. Bosses and co-workers can, if you let them make life miserable, but if you (at least for me) approach your job/life as did my co-worker your tolerance level really rises.

Pete

Well -

I have no children to worry about. 2 cats, and they are hugely insane and sometimes a handful, but they can be caged.

DW has almost the same mindset I do, on some things she is more forceful, on others not so much. We tend to mesh nicely - I handle stuff, she handles food and clothes.

Cooperating in groups. My time in the service showed there are leaders, followers, subject matter experts, and sheep. Cull the sheep, they do only what is told, nothing more, and may do jobs poorly. You either lead, assist the leader, or don't let the door hit ya on the way out. You keep subject matter experts around if and only if they are useful - like docs, nurses, farmers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, engineers. The social scientists and the lawyers, see ya, don't want to be ya (and at one time I was a sociology major and a paralegal, but learned useful skills despite my handicapped learning).

The people I will join with more than likely all think about the same way DW and I do. Best case we escape to her family's area, worst case we ride it our here

The boss is your brother in law? And yes, mine is and is getting quite unbearable ATM

There are few strategies I've tried. They don't always work but sometimes situations will surprise me and come together.

A turn that often works is to simply ask people to work with you. A simple 'Please, work with me on this' often works wonders. It isn't a long term solution, people will eventually want to negotiate an understanding, but it might gain cooperation in the heat of a disaster situation.

This goes along with the general principle that asking goes a long way. A lot of people will help, some will make huge contributions, but they need/like to be asked. Very old school to suggest politeness and asking directly advances your cause but it is, in my experience, always a good start.

It also pays not to assume you know who the useful, versus the not useful people might be. IMO the point is to make the best of the situation where you don't have a lot of control over the raw material you are given to work with. For example don't write off the lawyers. A popular assumption is that SHTF and laws won't count. History tells a different story. Throughout history disasters may disrupt the legal system but the system always reasserts itself. You might want some legal advice during a disaster because it is pretty much a sure thing that you will be facing judgment when it all stops spinning. Helping, or failing to help, and certainly any use of force, are opening for legal issues later. A little legal advice might be good.

The other point is that people are not one dimensional. One of the finest cabinetmakers, specialized in using all hand tools and 16th century techniques, is a lawyer. It also has to be noted that just because someone is trained as a lawyer they can't tote a pack, swing an axe, herd kids, hold an injured person's hand. With electricity off and fuel in short supply a lot of things are going to have to be done by hand.

In times of uncertainty, and there are few things that sow uncertainty better than a disaster, people need to be needed. Everyone wants to feel useful and useful part of a team. A person may be borderline hysterical but if you find them a job a lot of them will settle down. Simple repetitive jobs can be calming.

Don't overlook the many paperwork jobs that need to be done. Every group disaster kit can do with a large supply of 3by5 cards and pencils. Every person has a card made out for them. Everything goes onto the card. Name, age, home address, etcetera gets noted. Then you can add special needs, injuries, skills and contact information. Nobody likes paperwork but, for better or worse, paperwork is the currency of administration and administration is the core of group management.

You can't manage a group if you don't know how many people there are. You need to know details about how many men, women, children there are. You need to know about how many people need medications. How many have special food requirements?

lawyers, administrators, secretaries, clerks, and middle management are often the best at this necessary paperwork. Use them. Orphaned children are often better off if you assign an adult to be their temporary and provisional guardian. Isolated people who are infirm and/or otherwise unable to fend for themselves may also benefit from assigning a guardian. They still need supervision but it is surprising how making such linkages can help both the guardian and their charge. Pressed into service difficult people may surprise you and shine.

"Well, Susan, I wish it was that simple. Sometimes people cause you stress by pointing you in two opposing directions, and putting their sticks between your feet."

Oh, I was just pointing out that the concept worked for them. I don't have the patience. DO IT OR GET OUT OF THE WAY is where I usually stand.

Personally, I prefer to lock the idiots out in the -45F blizzard or shove them off a cliff.


"Shhh, grab the dogs and get into the car and close the windows! Hurry!"

"Why?"

"There's a bear coming!"

"Really? Where?"

You know the joke about not having to run fast enough to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun YOU? I suspect there's more truth to that than most people realize.

I went to a safety meeting recently where the Operation Lifesaver presenter was talking about how stupid some people are around trains and crossing. Quite a good video of car/train and truck/train encounters, a lot of stupid in a short time. The metal recycling people would have been drooling.

I know it sounds insensitive at best and callous at worst, but there are a lot of people out there who have managed to survive simply because other people have kept them safe. Let them off their leash and they make the newspapers and the Darwin Awards.

* You can't fix stupid people, and you often can't save them no matter how hard you try. Don't try too hard, they may kill you in the process.

* The shallow end of the gene pool has a lot of rocks, and really DOES need more chlorine. And you don't even have to hold their heads under, they'll do it themselves.

* If stupid people walk between mainline RR tracks with a cellphone against one ear and a finger jammed in the other, are you really doing the world a favor if you tell them Amtrak is coming at 79 mph?

* Isn't it irritating when stupid is the rule, rather than the exception? My sister works for a hospital where you can't get fired. Oh, maybe if you stabbed a doctor or something, but if you just stabbed him and he didn't die, they would probably just tell you not to do it again and forget about it. They wouldn't even make you clean up the blood.

* You may have noticed that there's no old saying about "Survival of the dumbest".

Sometimes they just aren't worth the time or the effort.

Resuscitate? Why? He just reached his Peter Principle level.

Cynical Sue (who else?)

Be careful not to write someone off simply because of some lable like a job title. We are not only what we do. If you assume we are you may just be setting yourself up to become the bathtub person yourself.

Stupid is as stupid does, not what hat stupid wears.

"Be careful not to write someone off simply because of some lable like a job title."

That would be stupid, wouldn't it? As in the old play, The Admirable Crichton, where a class-conscious British group is stranded on an island, and only the butler has the skills to keep them alive.

Your company janitor (if the job hasn't been outsourced) is likely to be more useful than the CEO.

Sue

The micromanagers can actually be fairly usefull. They don't play well with others, but tend to be detail oriented if left on their own. Give them a project that only needs one person, has a high level of exactness, and doesn't have a critical deadline. It will be done to perfection, be delivered very late, and it'll keep them out of your hair.

The biggest personality hazard is the enthusiastic amateur. Plenty of effort, but they have no idea what they're doing. They do so much collateral damage, it's better to have them sit on the sidelines or given tasks that don't require any degree of precision that can not be obtained with a 10 lb sledge hammer.

a person's learning style greatly influences the way he participates in a group project....you might want to look at the works of Edward de Bono, and his "Six Thinking Hats"....to help identify a student's learning style, I used the basic premise as a class activity... by letting my students choose which colored folder they wanted for their class notes... the color matched their self described personalities pretty well

...also you might look at the Gregoric Delineative, but it has lost some favor...the correlation between learning styles and brain dominance with the students was an on going project for me, especially with my student athletes and their reaction times.. I had very bright science students that had difficulty doing sequential problem solving steps, particularly factor-label Stoichiometric sequences ... to streamline the terminology, I standardized two... global and concrete sequential, and attempted to help the students learn their particular style, to help them better navigate my class (I'm concrete sequential, and taught that way)

what shook out was a correlation between brain dominance and reaction times...opposite side of brain dominates eg. right hemisphere controls left side of body

by dropping a ruler, and allowing them to catch it with, and without warning eg. 3, 2, 1, drop....they could convert the distance to a time (d = 1/2 att)

left handed ... close to .10 sec or less

right handed, dominant left eye .... < .14sec

right handed, dominant right eye, when fingers interlaced and thumbs overlapped end up with left thumb on top >.15

right handed, dominant right eye, right thumb on top >.20sec

the quickest tended to be very global, and had the hardest time doing sequential tasks...tended to like history, literature
the slowest tended to like math and science

always maintained we put the wrong person in the cockpit of a fighter .... really needed the quy/girl with the quickest reaction time not an engineer...

The problem with any statistical method or general form of classification will be the outliers. For what little it is worth I am an engineer and in various physiology tests back in my college days I had very, very quick reaction times relative to the normal population. Of course to confuse the matter further I am right handed, left footed, eye dominance varies by task and my fine motor control is relatively poor (even I can't read my handwriting).

I regularly work with pilots (often former fighter pilots) and while I'm sure reaction time is important the pilots I know maintain that being able to manage the aircraft systems (very sequential stuff) while maintaining situational awareness (a much more global skill) is the key to success. That makes the best very rare.

People are individuals and must be taken and treated as such.

- Eric