“This is the culture of the micro-aggression, where people literally seek out opportunities to be offended....Victim status is so desirable that it's constantly faked or exaggerated, and claims that one is not a victim are met with indignation.” David French
“He knew how much pride his people took him being forever misunderstood.” Davis Bunn, Lion of Babylon
Cancel culture is part of our society now.
You can’t just disagree with someone; you must destroy them. A friend and I were canceled from a nonprofit fraternal organization, and I am sharing the process that was used. To battle something, you must first understand it. I’ll then explain what I could have done differently.
The COVID-19 restrictions were lifted and our bar and restaurant opened up with amazing success! The newly installed catering company was a huge hit, and we were so busy on the first weekend that I had to enlist the help of my wife and children to help run food and drinks to the patrons. It was a beautiful piece of property with a lot of space for social distancing. The service was good and the food was amazing! We did more business in that first weekend than we would do in a normal month. While many of the commercial restaurants didn’t have the space to efficiently social distance, we did! In addition to increasing sales, our membership surged. The membership base increased by over 25% in one month alone!
Suddenly, there was a lot of money flowing through the club. I became concerned because the financial controls were so poor that we couldn’t get the most basic financial information from the treasurer. Furthermore, in a month where we had record breaking sales, I had problems getting the servers and vendors paid.
I began to ask questions.
I asked about mandatory audit required of a 501(c)(7) nonprofit. I asked about profit and loss statements and cost of goods sold data. But the most dangerous questions I asked were around potential conflicts of interest, specifically “who is getting paid?”.
My friend was also asking questions. His focused on the need for getting proper county permitting and ensuring that repairs, maintenance and improvements were done with licensed electricians and plumbers.
None of these lines of inquiry should be alarming or controversial, but they were.
It came to a head when I asked, “what are we going to find when an unbiased person looks at those books?” The next day the leader of the organization sent an email to the entire board saying that I “accused him of stealing” and that my colleague and I were “disrespectful”. He was concerned that we needed to work through this so we could come together as a team.
My colleague and I immediately responded that we hadn’t accused him of anything. We had just asked about financial statements, legal requirements and permitting. We suggested that no meeting was needed, and if there was any evidence that we made such an accusation then it should be presented.
Nothing was presented. With no accusation and no evidence, he had managed to portray himself as a victim.
The meeting was scheduled.
Coda
We just hired a manufactures representative for our product, the SeaClutch. I shared in an earlier post that we were awarded a patent a few weeks ago, and with that in hand we are now ready to sell in bulk. There has been such interest in our bringing the product to market that a publisher approached me about writing a book. More to follow! You can see the product at www.seaclutch.com.