A small rant in Juggling with Hedgehogs

I really don’t know why I have to do this, but I know that if I don’t, I’ll be tempted to say something - probably the wrong thing - to the wrong person, and cause a big argument for no gain whatsoever. So here I am, because this is safest.

This is a throw-back to my marriage, and my work with the band that my daughter, soon-to-be-ex-husband, and my daughter’s boyfriend all play in together.

That band. My god, they have to be THE rudest people on the planet. When I got involved in booking the band gigs, the drummer, who is a self-admitted control freak, wouldn’t let go of things. He meddled, he miscommunicated with everyone, and then, after a while, he and the bass player started double-booking themselves for higher paid gigs, leaving me to have to find deps for them - often at short notice. Sometimes, they helped, and found us deps themselves, but this was a pretty rare thing. More often than not, they dumped the band in the shit, and I had to dig them out.

I worked closely with that band for a year and a half, and not once, not ONCE did any of them thank me for booking ALL their gigs, negotiating fair payment for them, maintaining good contacts with all the venues, sending all the emails, updating the Facebook page and promoting the band on Facebook and twitter. I didn’t even care about the lack of thanks, but pointedly ignoring my emails did start to grate.

More than anything, what pissed me off was when I wrote to them all in April, when my husband ended our marriage very suddenly, to say I was unwell and unable to continue managing the band, and that this was most likely going to be permanent.

Not one of them replied. Not even to say ‘sorry to hear that and I hope you’re better soon’. Not a thing. That INCLUDES MY OWN DAUGHTER. Bearing in mind how much time I’ve put into helping her with her singing career over the years, that really stung.

So I’ve been mildly amused recently when they turned up to a gig that had been cancelled (and yes, I had informed them all, but as usual, they had ignored my email, so they had a wasted journey and a night when they could have been earning elsewhere).

This happened again this Saturday, when a gig that had been cancelled in FEBRUARY was still in their diaries and they were preparing to leave for it when my daughter texted me to tell me she had a gig that night and I replied ‘really? where?’ - this must have rung alarm bells for her, because she contacted the venue and sure enough, the gig had been cancelled.

I wrote to her, and to her boyfriend AND to my ex-husband with a copy of my original email in it, pointing out that they had been informed of the cancellation on the 23rd of February.

Needless to say, none of them responded.

This is a quote from the Huffington Post that I completely agree with:
I’m no stickler for prissy etiquette. I just don’t believe in normalizing rudeness. To ignore an email sent to you in good faith, especially by someone you know, is to forget that you’re dealing with a fellow human being, who deserves to be treated with respect, and even with a modicum of care.\

I don’t know why being ignored makes me as angry as it does. I really need to learn to let this go and basically treat them with the same level of indifference, but being ignored just makes me jump up and down and shout louder, which is an extremely childish response, and probably the one they’re looking for. I really need to treat them the same way, but I somehow can’t bring myself to do it. A simple acknowledgement would be the appropriate response from them, but that would mean taking ownership, wouldn’t it? Not a single one of them has the maturity to do that. And clearly I don’t have the maturity to move past it.