1. Let your waitress call your customer a “big baby” when she asks you to not put cheese on her salad (she’s pregnant)
2. Put cheese on her salad anyway
3. Serve salmon that is frozen in the middle
4. Argue with her and her husband in front of everyone
5. When she Yelps, call her “uncultured and bizarre” and say that your precious restaurant is not for everyone

When it gets this bad, there’s really nothing you can do except go back to being a line cook.

Twitter gives individuals the power to confront corporations (and other powerful figures) and tell them what they think.

This is unprecedented. It’s not exactly one-to-one private conversation, but not exactly mass media, either. It’s a fantastic thermostat that allows an organization to take the Twittersphere’s temperature regarding their brand.

To this effect, it’s tempting to be David, lobbing stones at Goliath’s forehead. If all you want to do is vent and impress your buddies, lob away.

But if you want said organizations to listen to you and modify their behavior, consider not acting like an unhinged teenager.

You are a brand, too. Twitter gives everyone instant access to your brand. Are you subliterate? Have an anger problem? Like to TUI? Please don’t let it show if you expect to be taken seriously by anyone.

Twitter is where the power of nice trumps the power of shame. If you’re addressing my organization because you care and have a real concern and you want to save others the pain you’re going through, great! Let’s talk. Be concerned, be stern.

Just don’t be abusive. Abusive doesn’t work.

Every once in a while an awesome gal says to me, “I’d love to run for office, but…”

But she’s not the Virgin Mary combined with St. Joan of Arc with a little Mother Theresa thrown in.

I’d like to say that the political climate for women is better than ever, except for the massive hissy fit the Internet threw when Hillary dared to reach for the highest ring, combined with the collective seizure America had when someone who is no dumber or less qualified than George W. Bush got picked to be a VP.

Here’s what I think is going on:

1. Women are still largely responsible for raising children. So that means you have two types of women running for office in most cases — childless women and empty-nesters. Sexy HuffPo conspiracy theories aside, this is what made Sarah Palin flame out. I have no doubt about it. Your average governor is working round-the-clock and your typical Congressperson is in another city four days a week and can’t go home on a whim. Look at what happened recently when a Congressman chose to put his children over voting on a bill — imagine how tough it is for moms.

2. The vetting process for candidates is disgusting. This keeps a lot of women out of races. One told me that she had too many “skeletons in her closet”. Every woman feels like she has a target on her back, open to humiliation. In my state, a moderate Democrat woman was handily thumping a conservative man for a Congressional seat. Suddenly, multiple websites went up calling her a homewrecker. She won, but were the race closer, who knows? If a woman is less-than-a-good-girl, we hear about it early and often. Not so much with the guys.

3. Stupid sexist bullshit still abounds. Women candidates still largely have to be attractive. Not too long ago, a conservative blog in my state accused Democrats of circulating a picture of our new woman governor that showed she had wrinkles. Lots of them. Oh my god, a woman who looks somewhat her age, the horror!

And if a woman is too attractive (Sarah Palin), all people want to talk about is her hair and wardrobe, like she’s Barbie (and of course, she’s just as shallow and dumb). God help her if she’s somewhere in between and isn’t warm and fuzzy (Hillary Clinton), she’s Bad Mommy and we can’t possibly live with that, can we?

I don’t have an easy solution for all this, but the more we call it out and the less we tolerate it, the better.

There was a redhead sitting at the table next to ours in a busy restaurant. She looked like she belonged to our Meetup. Turns out she was having dinner with her husband.

When serious amounts of people started showing up for the Meetup, she got up and gave us her table. We were able to put five tables together and not scatter our seating. Very generous and kind of her.

I logged into our Meetup site this morning and saw her listed as a new member. “Hi, I’m the woman who gave you my table.”

What a great way to get noticed in a large group.

Instead of just joining a tribe, why not start off with a little generosity?

Know when Facebook started to suck?

It was right after the “People You May Know” function got introduced.

And then it got even worse — some brilliant Facebook business analyst purloined it into an “Everyone On Earth You May Possibly Know, Living Or Dead” function, and suddenly you had all these eyes on you. Boss eyes. Family eyes. Old boyfriend eyes. College Roommate eyes. High school enemy eyes.

And some of them requested to be your friend, and you said yes. And that’s when you shut up.

Suddenly, you can’t write about hilariously off-color things, because your coworkers are reading.

You can’t write about how depressed/lonely/alienated you still feel, because your high school classmates are reading and of course you must show that you are doing as well or better than them. Also, you have prestige and a tiny pile of money and nobody feels sorry for you, goddammit.

You can’t write about your family and friends, because they’d be livid. You are not Erma Bombeck.

You can’t express political opinions, because your clients disagree and might drop you.

So you talk about dumb, boring bullshit like making dinner, working out, and bathing your kids. Wheee. That’s fun. Hold the presses, you had a mojito after work.

Usenet was Cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs insane, but it was a lot of fun. Why? Because of anonymity. Nobody was real.

When everyone is real, they’re the most guarded, carefully real people they can be. And that sucks.

They make it all about them. You can recognize these “friends” by the way they consistently make the First Comment, and it’s usually only tangentially related to what you wrote (but always about them!) They crave exposure and love that you have a big online audience. Do not feel bad about telling them to take a hike — people like this make online communities lame.

You have incompatible senses of humor. A long time ago, a friend sent me a pornographic image of Maggie Simpson. Besides probably being illegal, I found it disgusting and offensive and gave the friend a piece of my mind. He called me a prude. Could this friendship be saved? No, it couldn’t. Life went on.

The flip side of this is that if you enjoy snarky humor and someone in your audience can’t roll with that — do them a favor and be very clear that this is who you are, you’re not going to change, and they are welcome to leave if they don’t like it.

Your friend is a trainwreck. Always sick, never can pay the bills, everyone is mean to her, her job gets worse every day… Listen, if all your friend wants is sympathy and {{{hugs}}}, what’s in it for you? Surely you’re not a Messiah who can fix people. We all go through horrible times, sometimes for months — but if your friend shows no other side than Tragic Victim, move on.

Your “friend” turns out to be a professional friend collector. Ever add someone, only to find that they have 1,000 friends and most of their updates involve selling something? Yeah, get rid of those people.

You probably shouldn’t have become “friends” in the first place. You talk to a nice person at Meetup. Immediately, she adds you as a Facebook friend. You quickly find out that she strongly dislikes your religion or political background. You can spend the next several years being a model example of a Tolerant Evangelical Christian or a Common Sense Liberal to keep her liking you, but chances are you’re probably just going to get frustrated and end up filtering each other out before finally one of you makes the purge (“It’s not you, it’s me…”). Be careful who you add.

You find their interactions to be tiring rather than enjoyable. Your friend is nice. Occasionally witty. Beyond that, something is missing — but the bad news is that your friend doesn’t realize it, and wants to talk to you all the time. About nothing.

Make yourself scarce, and don’t apologize for it. You’re allowed.

When you should NOT break up with an online friend

One of you goes through a major life change. Your friend has a baby and can no longer devote a lot of time toward helping you debate feminism with high school students. She soon starts writing about the baby every day. You can either blow her off because she no longer serves your needs, which I think is selfish and lame, or you can appreciate her side of the fence (while she can look over and appreciate yours.) Remember the reasons why you became friends.

They experience a crisis. I can’t believe I have to write this, but if a friend loses a loved one, let him grieve. Endlessly. You are not obligated to comment on every update. Just be there. Grief is not selfish. Don’t ditch a friend who is down.

You get into a fight. I can’t count on two hands how many of my dearest friends started out as enemies. Debate is good for you. Fighting can be a normal part of friendships, as long as it’s not over a deal-breaker (like inappropriate Maggie Simpson pictures). Evaluate whether your argument is worth losing this friend forever.

Had a (genuinely) lovely chat with a person from Kudzu.com today.

Me: Your website is broken.
Them: I’m sorry, could you be more specific?
Me: When I search, it’s glitchy. I am directed to look at an ad, but am not allowed to move on to see my search results. Here is a screenshot. I am using Firefox and Windows XP.
Them: Wow, can’t replicate that, but we’ll have our tech team look at it. Thanks.

Personally, I think that initiating this kind of conversation over Twitter is a jerky thing to do. Why did I do it?

Because they don’t want to hear from you unless you are an advertiser or in the media. And as a web professional, I would hate for someone to not tell me that my website wasn’t accessible to 15% of the population.

So they have a dedicated resource who will respond to public Tweets, but not private e-mails.

Wouldn’t you rather get bad news in private?