Nowadays, you don’t always have to agree with your parents, your boss, or other authority figures. You have more freedom to express yourself, letting them know “how you really feel”.
But think twice before you say or do anything rash–in the following, “incidents” of a general and a soccer player may remind you just when to shut your mouth.
General Stanley A McChrystal, once the US military chief in Afghanistan, ended his 34-year Army career after criticizing his boss, US President Barack Obama, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
In the story, he is quoted as calling the president “timid” and “disengaged”. He called the national security adviser “a clown”, dismissed the words of US Vice President Joe Biden and also trashed top diplomats and allies.
This wasn’t the first time the general publicly defied the White House. Last September, The Washington Post cited a McChrystal memorandum in which the general said he needed at least 40,000 more troops for the war in Afghanistan or risk “mission failure”. McChrystal and his staff said they did not leak the report, which was sent to the Pentagon, but it angered the White House nonetheless.
当月，麦克里斯特尔还现身伦敦，表示拜登主张的阿富汗军事行动收编提案将会导致“阿富汗乱作一团”。
That month, McChrystal also appeared in London and said Biden’s scaled-back proposal for military action in Afghanistan would lead to “Chaos-istan”.
Of course, Obama wasn’t happy about the general’s latest public slander. “I welcome debate among my team, but I won’t tolerate division,” Obama said. He fired McChrystal–officially, he accepted his resignation–last week during an Oval Office meeting that lasted less than 30 minutes.
Having a disagreement with Obama wasn’t McChrystal’s error. Challenging his superiors publicly was where he went wrong. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates once warned him that participants in war deliberations should give the president their best advice “candidly, but privately.”
For people who control a war and run a country, such disagreements are also political issues. McChrystal ignored the importance of preserving the authority and credibility of the commander in chief, President Obama. His personal attack on those leaders in the article just made the matter a lot worse.
没有老板能够容忍这般被公开羞辱，更不必说奥巴马了。
No boss could stand such overt humiliation–let alone Obama.
The France Football Federation (FFF) removed French soccer star Nicolas Anelka from France’s World Cup team after he insulted coach Raymond Domenech in a crude manner and refused to apologize for his unacceptable outburst.
The Chelsea striker reportedly made obscene comments to Domenech at halftime of the team’s 2-0 loss to Mexico earlier this month, telling Domenech to “go screw yourself, dirty son of a whore”.
Anelka later confirmed he had an argument with Domenech. “I indeed had a heated conversation with the coach, but it happened within the confines of the changing rooms, between the coach and me, in front of my teammates and the staff,” Anelka told the France Soir newspaper. “That should never have come out of the changing rooms.”
阿内尔卡在当天晚上就离开了法国队集训营。
Anelka left the Team France Camp on the same evening.
要知道，没有老板能够容忍这般被公开羞辱。所以当遇到分歧时，你最好选择与老板私下沟通。
谁才是老板？ Who’s the boss?
法国队在世界杯的失利在部分程度上要归咎于球队内部的不合。
France’s bad luck at the World Cup should partly be attributed to disharmony inside the team.
Although Anelka emphasized that the argument was meant to stay within the team and was leaked by some “traitor”, this didn’t change the fact that he did something disrespectful. You can talk things over, or even argue, with your boss. But once curse words come out, most bosses will have the same response: “You’re fired!”
道歉始终是明智之举，无论道歉的人真诚与否。
Apologizing is always the right and smart thing to do–whether or not the person making the apology is actually being genuine.
