denying power – Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

Someone contracting with you to do something is like a boss, but it’s a different relationship; such a person is a client and a client is more like a customer. It’s your job to do what the customer wants but the customer isn’t in charge of the business. Or maybe I’m off base. Of course, if the disabled woman didn’t hire and can’t fire this person, the person’s working for the parents, then, aren’t they?

I think the power relationships between assistants/PAs/whatever and folks with disabilities are a lot more complicated than that.

Even with a direct hire, it’s more complicated than other types of employment. For instance, hiring someone to write a webpage for you is really different than hiring someone to do things you need in order to survive.

Especially, given that when people murder folks who are disabled enough to need extensive care, they often get away with it.

And there are all kinds of complications I don’t understand well.

I don’t know more to say about this, though. Do any of y’all?

When you have power over someone, it’s important to acknowledge it. If you don’t acknowledge that you have power, it’s hard to examine your use of it. If you’re not paying attention to how you’re using your power, you will come to abuse it, and you won’t notice.

Sometimes, when people are uncomfortable having power over others, they deal with this by telling jokes about it. These jokes are about either denying that they have power, or denying that they’d ever be capable of abusing it. For instance:

Jokes about how people who they have power over are really in charge (eg: “Sometimes I say my secretary is *my* boss”, “I’m the teacher, but the kids are really running the show”.
Jokes about how they could abuse power. (“Next thing you know, I’ll be having you interns fetch my dry cleaning and babysitting my kids.”)
Jokes about how people could overthrow them. (“I see you three gossiping. Plotting a revolt?”)
Jokes about being an oppressive boss (“I’m such a big mean ogre.”)
Pretend unreasonable orders (“We all have to work until midnight… haha just kidding, go enjoy your family”)

These jokes are especially bad when they’re told by a powerful person to someone they outrank. They’re basically the humor equivilent of saying, “You’d better tell me that I don’t actually have power over you and that I never misuse it.”

Getting people to tell you that you’re a good person doesn’t help you to treat others well. Acknowledging your power, thinking about how you use it, and soliciting and listening to actual feedback does.