Mild mannered? Hardly

Most people who know me would probably agree that 
I am not by definition a mild mannered person. On occasion, I can come across as combative and somewhat aggressive -often because I simply responses defensively and vociferously. Like in: "I am not yelling at you sweetheart, I am  simply speaking louder than you" -

 I often wonder how and why I react that way and why that has become part of my identity. I'm guessing its because I've responded that way too many times over 75  years of my existence.  I have given it a lot of thought and did manage to form a few relative conclusions. Some of these ideas may be a stretch but then again its all I have to go on.

The first reason I respond like I do is simply because like Popeye,  I yam whut I yam. It is a learned response and reaction. We neve spoke in soft tones, we spoke up and then some.

The family name gives some clues. The name derives its meaning from the word for vendor which probably is the profession followed by generations of my Polish family, possibly dating back to the middle ages. Back then it was quite common to take on the name of the family trade.

 My last name was derived from shopkeeper or vendor, a trade that demanded a loud powerful voice to attract customers to your tiny stall in the middle of a larger, louder marketplace. I can't say what they sold, but my father told stories of his grandfather in Poland having been a somewhat successful business owner.

My grandfather, shortly after his arrival in the US,  became a grocery store owner and my father followed in his footsteps. No training, just an unknown unseen inner directive drove them to that profession. As I entered the business world, I too became a vendor of sorts, then a retail shop owner. My two sons and my daughter followed into variants of that career path. They all sell and can be quite loud as well. Chips off the old mouth so to speak. It seems to be in our blood.

Could the choices we made be a result of genetics or happenstance ? Who can say for sure. I ended up as a retail shopkeeper and have always felt comfortable in that line of work.

How does this relate to aggressiveness and competitiveness?. I was raised in an environment that believed that competitors were not friends. The family never socialized with their many competing grocers, including one from across the street or the one down the block. They were the enemy and our job was to beat them at the game. Friendly competition did not exist in our world, nor in mine.

Later on my early jobs were intensely competitive. I worked for the giant  Procter and Gamble Corporation and my responsibilities lay in fiercely competing for shelf space, advertising space in newspapers, flyers and in gaining favor with the store managers. Our competitors  were companies like Colgate, Lever brothers and even against competing units of our own company. Fraternizing with the competition was strictly forbidden. Business was war.

Every subsequent job I held  was intensely competitive which carried on all through my career. There were no Kumbaya moments.

When we started our Nature and wildlife business, we were pioneers in a niche that was in its infancy. We
competed against a national franchise group Wild Birds Unlimited and protected our ideas and our turf as much as possible from infringement from others looking to gain a foothold in the market.

The unique business I founded and began franchising saw numerous parties attemptto copy our ideas and avoid paying me for the rights. I personally escorted numerous "spies" out of our stores and fought for special favors from our suppliers.  

Once again even in this so called "genteel" industry, we were competitive and aggressive unlike the more civilized sorts . From the beginning, our primary goal was  to make money not watch birds and decorate gardens. That part could come later.

Back in my earlier business career as a sales manager, competition between my sales crew and those from competing companies was extremely keen. Ditto the commercial restaurant chinaware industry where I fought tooth and nail for supremacy in the that industry. It was a very tough cutthroat way of doing business. I loved it.

Never during the 40 years or so of my various undertakings was I anything but a hard driving competitor.  Thank goodness we weren't carrying weapons as there might have been many casualties along my path.

I think back to high school and earlier when I began playing sports. We were always out to beat the hell out of competing teams. There was little of the namby pamby handshaking between teams going on. We were not taught to  "like" our opponents as the facebook generation does. We were instead  taught to destroy them. That's where I come from.


Back in my developmental phase,  we protected our street corners, our neighborhoods, the girls from our neighborhood from the onslaught of the Italians, southern whites, mexicans, Protestants and of course the Negroes who threatened all of our institutions. Those parties in turn protected their interests in similar fashion. It was normal and expected, much like the Sharks and the Jets from West Side Story

How could you not become competitive, loud and civilized?