Radical Honesty

My phone dinged its familiar Marco Polo notification last week. I ignored it. Then it dinged again. I ignored it. Then it sent out a proper gaggle of dings which I could not ignore. This turned out to be a group of my amazing friends playing a rousing game of “What Should Candice Do About Her Neighbors?”

Synopsis: My friend Candice’s neighbors asked her to watch their dog, and, as luck would have it, Candice loves both these neighbors and their dog. Great! But (there’s always a but)…problem: Candice has watched this dog before and learned the hard way that the dog is not potty trained. And also…problem complication: these neighbors are easily offended and certainly have a blacklist. So, what to do?

Options: (1)Find an unoffensive way to be unavailable (the white lie method); (2)Say yes and just deal with yellow-polka-dot carpet followed by Cinderella-style scrubbing (the silent martyr method); or (3)Address this with the neighbors and hope there’s no fallout (the uncomfortable truth method). Now, Candice is both honest and good at setting boundaries, so she tried option 3. Unfortunately, fallout commenced. But why? And what if it hadn’t?

What if instead of fretting and “phoning a friend,” (or, in this case, Marco’ing a gaggle of friends), Candice had already known that she could provide constructive feedback to the neighbors without fallout? What if instead of…