KEY POINTS:
I had a fabulous midwife with my first child - she was the antidote to all that feeble-minded aromatherapy and whale music flummery spouted by natural childbirth biddies. When I went home with my day-old baby the midwife said: "If you get worried in the middle of the
night, don't call me." The implication was that I should stop being neurotic and, well, simply learn to cope.
Funnily enough, her robust Britain-during-the-Blitz approach gave me far more confidence in myself than the fussy hens with their tut-tutting, doom scenarios and conflicting schools of "nurturing" advice.
I got thinking about my formidable midwife's approach as I read the judgment from the Employment Relations Authority in the case of the Mojo advertising woman Shelley Menelda who claimed she was bullied by formidable L'Oreal boss Frances Stead and wanted $1.2 million in compensation.
In an alarmingly sensible judgment from the frequently barmy ERA, she got told to noodle off. (Her lawyer is appealing the judgment.) Ms Menelda, who managed the L'Oreal account at the Mojo agency, claimed Ms Stead's "bullying" led to her having a mental breakdown and being diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. She has recovered and now has mild to moderate anxiety. (Bless you chook, doesn't everyone?)
I was curious about what Ms Stead did that was so tyrannical. Was she a Devil-Wears-Prada despot? Did she beat her up with a tube of Panoramic Curl mascara?
Nope, the substance of the bullying claim was that Ms Stead kept Ms Menelda waiting for meetings ("sometimes by as much as an hour and a half"), asked her to take minutes of the meeting ("something a secretary would normally do") and most poignantly, never thanked her.
Oh, boo-bloody-hoo.
Actually, the ERA found Ms Stead had explicitly thanked Ms Menelda several times in emails to her superiors, describing her as "totally exemplary" and showing "commitment and passion" to the L'Oreal account.
Mojo seemed almost as drippy as its employee, sending her to a health spa in Australia, trying to accommodate her desire to change accounts and indulging her sense of victimhood.
Ms Menelda also gave evidence that she was stressed because she was organising her wedding and had frequent bladder infections; what her boss at Mojo was supposed to have done about this I cannot imagine, but it sounds as though they were doing their best to fix that too.
Someone at the agency should have told Ms Menelda to buck herself up. She might have regrouped: realised clients are always demanding bastards and not to take it all so personally. There is a fine line between bullying and mentoring.
As Ms Menelda herself admitted in an email: "Frances is tough (and quite often well out of line with her approach), however I have got to say that I have learnt such a lot from her, so all is not bad." Anyway, whoever gave Ms Menelda the expectation that she deserved to get continually thanked for what she did?
She was paid a salary of $120,000; doesn't that say ta very much?
Of course if Mojo had told Ms Menelda to suck it up, there might have been quite a different finding in the courts.
Incidentally, my second baby, due any day now, can't be delivered by the formidable midwife but I have found another level-headed practitioner who understands that despite blathering on hypocritically about tough love, I am a shameful coward. At the birth of my first child I calmly read Wodehouse while 9cm dilated thanks to a life-affirming epidural.
Yes Ms Menelda, I am inconsistent, but there are times to be stoic and times when it is perfectly reasonable to be a bit of a sissy.
