Transferrable skills

Yesterday at work we learned we are being sued by a temporary employee who did a few weeks' worth of work for us last year.  No idea why.  But our receptionist came completely to pieces.  She is (or used to be) friends with this woman, but then they had a big dramatic fight about a month ago and now aren't speaking.  And so our receptionist figures this lawsuit is All Her Fault.

She was in tears and pretty well unable to do her job, so I called her into my office and talked with her for a while.  In the process I learned far more than I ever wanted to know about her friendship with this Temp ... and at that I cut her off before she got into any really personal details.  But I learned enough to see that Receptionist is not too smart (this much I knew already), that she reacts 100% emotionally, and that she really has been very foolish in how she handled this particular friendship.  Not that I told her these things, of course!  She was in bad enough shape already, and it's none of my place.  Mixing work life and personal advice is the kind of thing that can land you in this sort of lawsuit in the first place.

But I reflected as I talked to her that I was using all the same skills I developed over the years of living with Wife, calming her down whenever she went round the bend.  So in a sense I suppose they were useful skills to learn.  And yesterday evening, as I drove the boys to spend a week at Wife's place and told them all about it, they chimed in with the very same observation.

Son 1 even added, "When I was taking care of my drunk friends after graduation, I talked to them exactly the way I used to talk to Mom when she started losing it: 'It's OK, I'm right here, I'm not going to abandon you, I'll take care of you.' It worked too."

In many ways I wish neither of us had ever had to learn these skills; but I suppose if we had to live through all those years, it's good that we at least got something useful out of it all ....