[Noisebridge-discuss] Late night noisebridge, not so great for working anymore.

Jake jake at spaz.org
Wed Dec 19 04:26:57 UTC 2012


I heard about this and the person described was doing the same thing 
before.  I ask that anyone who sees that person to tell them to leave and 
not come back until they come to a meeting to talk about it.  Don't wait 
for them to get drunk, or for it to get late, but do consider gathering a 
couple of people with you who know enough about the situation to agree 
with you.

If you see this person, go around the space and find other people who know 
about the problem.  Ask them to join with you to tell the person that they 
must leave until the next meeting.  If the person refuses, please do not 
give up.  They are trying to wear you down, but they will fail.  Continue 
to insist that they leave until the next meeting at which time they can 
challenge your request for them to leave.

A few weeks ago a problem person was confronted by three people.  This 
person raised their voice and expressed that we had no right to kick them 
out, even though the meeting was the next night.  Eventually others came 
to see what the fuss was about and they could clearly see that this person 
was being unreasonable.  The problem personsaw that more and more people 
were united in seeing this confrontation come to a reasonable end and they 
eventually gave up, after insulting everyone but complying with the demand 
that they give up their key.

they did not come back for the meeting, thank god.

it is necessary to make the space a better place, indeed to keep it from 
becoming crappy, to do these difficult things and confront the problems. 
There is no way around it.

Nobody is asking you to confront a problem person by yourself, but rather 
to go around and find others who agree that it is a problem, and get some 
of them to join you (the others give their sitting support to your action) 
and confront the person with a group of at least three.

The person mentioned below has used up their chances and should be made to 
leave the next time they show up at the space.  They can come back to a 
meeting to talk about it if they so choose.

-jake


Robert "Finny" Merrill wrote:
I went to NB for the first time in quite a while last night, and
around 10 or 11 I think, I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of
drunkenness and rowdy socializing going on. I'm not an enemy of
drunkenness and rowdy socializing, but one particular individual
(whose name iirc was Jessie, and was a friend of someone else named
Martin) was rather sloshed and repeatedly approached me, interrupted
what I was doing and spewed rather rude insults at me because I was
trying to get work done instead of getting drunk like him (I am not
kidding, he actually said "I am offended by the fact that you guys
aren't drunk"). Whenever someone tried to tell him his behavior was
inappropriate, he responded by insulting them and what they were
doing, trying to fight them, and throwing small objects around the
space.

I observed several people get up from their work and leave as a direct
result of this.

I did not feel comfortable kicking him out because I did not think he
would respond to anything short of threats to call the police, and as
a non-member I have no legal standing to have someone removed from the
space.

Also, several other people in the space defended his conduct, one in
particular saying that I should just deal with it and that I should
take his insults as, in her words "constructive criticism".

I feel like while most people who drink and socialize in the space are
not disruptive, the fact that drinking and socializing are so
tolerated leads people like this to believe their actions are okay. I
think we need to make it clear that if you are not working, you should
at the very least not be bothering people who are.

-Finny



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