ODWYCDo

It is an acronym, but not a military one.  I came up with it after a victim came to me to complain that his case was being mishandled by my coworkers.  I was taking his information for the report when he waxed very disrespectful of me and law enforcement in general.  From what he claimed were quotes from the officers that he dealt with first, he had a leg to stand on, too.

Now, as I said, he started to try and chew on my ass.  I clearly stated that while he may have complaints against someone else for what had happened in the past, I was doing my duty, behaving civilly toward him, and would appreciate it if he could keep his extraneous comments to himself. 

He became enraged.  I stood back and waited. He went on for several minutes. 

Aside from monitoring my safety, I put my mind in neutral, helped by a rather gorgeous and scantily-clad young thing that happened to walk by and stare at the hissy fit the man was having and the uniformed man standing nearby.

When he had wound down, I stepped up and got the rest of his statement for the report, handed him the incident report number and told him where to go to get a copy of the report.  I later wrote the report.

The man filed a complaint against me for unprofessional conduct and failure to do my duty.

I managed to get a "Not Sustained" result for the unprofessional conduct and 'Unfounded' for the duty complaint.  To interpret for you non-SF folks:  They could not prove whether I had or had not talked shit, but they could see I had written the report.

When asked by my partner, who had stood by while all this was going on, why I wasn't more pissed, I just shrugged and said, "Only Do What You Can Do."

I meant that I can only be responsible or concerned with what I do and have done in the past, not what some asshat on his bike thinks of me.  He will still be an asshat, wherever he may go.  I have to be concerned with what I do and say.  This goes also for supervisors, or other people who fuck your work up.  Hey, I did my job to the best of my ability.  You got a problem, it ain't with my work ethic.  I don't intend to shift blame with this thought process, but rather embrace what I can do something about. And ignore, as much as possible, that which I cannot.

It is the same with writing.  I can only be responsible for those things that I did.  If sales are low and I didn't push my stuff and do everything I could to make it happen, then that's on me, I didn't ODWYCDo.

On the negative or critical side:  If I wrote some inflamatory things, then that's on me, but I won't lose sleep over someone's blatant, intentional disregard for what was actually written in favor of their 'opinion' of what went on.  If you don't already know the saying about similarity between assholes and opinions:  Everyone has one and they all stink.

Oh, and my little acronym is pronounced OdeWickDoh!