Ask Lemmy

Nothing nearly as grueling as a lot of these folks.

I worked as a weather forecaster for several years, specializing in flight weather and our main locations where we had supplies and people to protect. The setup at the time was a little weird in that we did everything for our pilots, but if we wanted to issue weather alerts for the greater locations, we had to go through our mother ship, basically. Which was a bunch of people in an entirely different location who you could only talk to via phone.

So, it's summer and we've been tracking this incoming storm. It looks like the motherload, like we are about to be wiped off the map. We talk with our pilots for days, send out emails to all personnel, cover our bases, etc. However, as the day actually approaches, the models aren't lining up with the real time data we're seeing. Everything looks like it's going to just miss us to the east and our operation will be safe. But the mother ship doesn't seem to agree, and they're pushing to send out warnings. Now there are three different levels to weather alerts. Advisory is for smaller stuff or the maybes. Watch is for the we're expecting this later, be warned. Warnings are things are happening, stop operations and shelter as appropriate.

So... being a very timid young one at this time with a fierce aversion to phone calls and confrontation, I had to call the mother ship and tell them in no uncertain terms, No. The guy that answered the phone on the other side was an older dude and seemed to think he knew everything. I don't remember exactly what he told me, but it was the equivalent of "shove it, pipsqueak". He hung up. I waited just a little longer for a new model run and to watch our satellite and wind reports. We simply weren't going to get hit and we needed to keep operations going, not shut down for no reason. So I called again and the dude is eating obnoxiously loudly on the other side of the line as I explain this. Just smacking all the food in my ear over the phone set. Disgusting and rude. He hangs up on me.

Now I'm shaking like a leaf by this point and starting to get flac from management about needing to get this warning taken away asap. It's amazing I could dial the number at all with how badly my hands were trembling. I remember ranting at him and he's still eating and giving me passive aggressive 'yep, mhm, sure' type answers as I keep going through all of my reasons. After a long long silent pause, finally he relents and the warning is dismissed.

I left my desk after that and threw up, lol. Confrontation is just the absolute worst. Especially with someone who sees you as lesser. Fuck that guy, though. I was right in the end. Just to the east of our boundaries there were record breaking hail reports, tornadoes, and a deluge of rain. But we only had a warm day.

The end :3

Td;lr Young and super non confrontational me had to stand up multiple times to an old dude who thought he was hot shit. I was right in the end. Everyone clapped.