I do volunteer work at my place of worship. One of my duties is seeing that the religious stuff gets coordinated. One of the responsibilities is sending out letters to parents telling them the day their child will have a special day for a religious ceremony. The date picked for the child is based on their birthday, but sometimes parents want a different time for the ceremony to occur. They think that by asking me, they'll get the date they want, but it's really determined by the calendar (we're talking 2 to 3 years away), and by the clergy.
One of the dads asked me to get the kid a date to be in Sept. The mom asked me two weeks ago for the same kid to get a date to be in June. I passed it on to the clergy, and for whatever reason, the kid was assigned the Sept. date.
The mom called me up tonite and basically said, I thought I told you we wanted a june date. I said, yes and I passed it on to the clergy, and they didn't give the date to your kid. They thought the earlier date was good. Call the office of monday and I'm sure it will be changed.
This mom is a big mouth, and I felt like the words she didn't speak but was feeling were.."You're an idiot!..I thought I told you junE!"
Of course after I hung up, I had a million and one comebacks..but..how do you deal with people like that, especially if youre not a pushy rude person yourself?

By staying calm, polite and resolute...anyone who's unreasonably pushy or rude will only feel ridiculous because their behavior isn't getting the response from you that they thought it would.

Byron said:

great answer, thanks. My dad always says, when you're right..youre right and nobody can change it. My insecurity tells me this woman is going to say bad things about me behind my back. My stronger side tells me alot of people don't like her cause she's pushy...

I'm usually doin' the pushin'.

She's usually doin' the cushion.

My experiences -- particularly in dealing with certain church types -- is that their reputation for being pushy precedes them. They often mistake volume for vision and comparative quiet with weakness. Persistence, polite persistence, is a great tool in such situations.

There's people out there that believe if they scream loud enough they will get their way. They need to be put in check from time to time.

What Byron said was very good


sometimes laughter and in a pleasant way telling them that they are exactly that ... rude and pushy ( i have a close friend that is and i gently remind her this way )

most improtant though is to not give into their demands and to be able to let their comments roll off of you ... what they say and do is a reflection on them


what you do in response is the reflection on you

i know that this isn't considered healthy but i find that passive aggression works quite well with pushy types. they never know what hit them.