The core YMCA values in action

The four core YMCA values are respect, honesty, caring, and responsibility.  Here they are in action:

"We need to speak before I leave for vacation.   If we do not speak this week, I will put your membership on hold until I return from vacation...Thanks and looking forward to connecting."      -Cynthia Klever, July 7, in an email

Two days later when I actually met with her, she was even more caring and respectful when I , on the pretext of, as she so elegantly put, "resolving the email you sent me earlier." 


If you don't want to or are not good at playing hardball, There are two sentences you need to remember when you encounter someone in a situation like this:
(1) You are not telling the truth.
(2) I will not have a conversation with you under these conditions."


Stop answering the questions, and getting flustered because you hadn't thought the other person would stoop so low as to distort facts and slam into you.


LEAVE IMMEDIATELY even if she says "I wil have to do X, Y, or Z now if we don't resolve this now."


You need time to think.  To cool down.  Of course, you're furious, hurt, and in shock.  But that's exactly what they want you to feel (you thought they were your "friend," in the American sense of the word?).


They want something out of that meeting then and there, and it is NOT, as you had hoped or even expected, to reach a middle ground or a fair resolution of the conflict.


If you're their employee, I'm not sure what to say really.

But I was in another situation over a year ago, and I succesfully navigated myself out of a situation where the other party was demanding that I speak to them at once under circumstances that would not have been favorable to me at all.