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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3429 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 25, 2023

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I play a Co-Ed recreational sport in my spare time. One of the players has annoyed enough people that I'm thinking of kicking her out. But she has shown a willingness to report people to the national board for minor offenses.

Any thoughts on how to remove her without triggering national board reprisals?

One approach is to make her want to quit, instead of firing her -- not sure what to suggest for making her life difficult in the context of a rec sports league though. Light-duty plausibly deniable bullying might do it, but for that you need a heartless bully.

Hilariously this is sort of what my wife suggested before she stopped herself and realized "oh, im suggesting bullying her out of the league ... let me think about this some more".

She is more likely to report the bullying I think. Someone on our mailing list jokingly called one of his friends fat, and she reported him. She is a little fat herself, so was obviously sensitive about that.

Also she is an anxiety ridden mess. Cries at tournaments, gets devastated by the slightest criticisms, etc. I feel like the slightest bullying would destroy her, or send her on a crazy war-path. I'm not really interested in dealing with either of those.

My default option right now is that she will just quietly never be on the team again, and never allowed to register for tournaments we host. No reasons ever given. I've also thought about removing her from the email list, but that would be obvious and lead to questions.

“Are we the baddies?”

Ghosting her is better than bullying. Straight up asking her to leave is better than either.

We are definitely the baddies.

I think I agree with that rank ordering

[asking her to leave] > [ghosting] > [bullying]

But I think the incentives are all screwy. Anyone who asks her to leave is probably going to get reported by her. The default behavior going forward will probably be to ghost her a bit. If someone tries to be "nice" and "inclusive" and make sure she is not ghosted, she will probably end up getting bullied by the people that are tired of dealing with her.

I'm in the league to play a sport, have fun, and stay in shape. I'm not here to be someone's group therapy outlet. There is a sliding scale of selfish <-> selfless. And I am admittedly much more on the selfish side when it comes to inter-personal interactions.

Tell me this is CoEd softball in Denver.

No, underwater hockey. Can't say where since that would narrow my identity down to a dozen people.

underwater hockey

I gotta be real, I was the DM of my DND group in college and this somehow seems nerdier.

It often attracts a sporty nerd type.

As if the underwater hockey part doesnt do that

There are dozens of us!

Haha fair. I know of a woman who may fit this description

Also she is an anxiety ridden mess. Cries at tournaments, gets devastated by the slightest criticisms, etc.

"The better to bully you with, my dear"...

I don't think I personally would be mean enough for this either though -- maybe you could recruit some Motteposters to your team as enforcers?

If she has any friends at all I guess the sensitive alternative would be some sort of sit-down chat -- it doesn't seem like she's getting what she'd like out of the sport, and could be better served by trying something else. (or a less competitive league? not sure the sport, but there's definitely opportunities out there for drop-in etc where nobody will criticize you for anything ever)

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