CallaFirestormBW
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Joined: 6/29/2008
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Angel made some really good points in her post, particularly concerning the nature of authority. I think that part of the problem, many times, when people aren't sure how to handle initiative vs. authority, is that it isn't quite so cut and dried. I think that a good servant comes to understand the scope of hir own relationship to hir Keeper(s), and what is expected of hir, and what things xhe can take initiative with, and which things need to be run past the Keeper, because there is that possibility that they may be, even slightly, outside the realm of "initiative" and into the realm of "overstepping authority". The line is so malleable from household to household....
Just as an example: In our home, we have a recipe for moussaka, which is a traditional Greek casserole. It is a beloved favorite of mine, and I'm pretty specific about how it is made. There are actually -three- recipes, because there is one that I will use when I am home alone or with friends but ABW, LBW and SRBW aren't home. There is one I will use when it is SRB and myself, with or without friends, and there is one we use if ABW and LBW are home. There is a good reason for this. My version has lamb -- SRB is allergic to lamb. Even the smell of it cooking and aeresolized lamb fat sends her into violent nausea. When the two of us are home, we have a version that has ground beef and a fenugreek-spiced ground pork. ABW and LBW are pescatarians (fish-eaters), LBW is violently allergic to nuts (anaphalaxis) and ABW is lactose-intolerant for milk (unless it is raw milk), but can eat cream and butter. When they're home, we have a version that has crumbled tempeh or is layered with smoked fish, and prepared with heavy cream rather than milk, unless we were able to score some raw milk for her visit.
Now...if a servant in our house noted that I was unhappy, and decided to make the lamb version for me to make me happier, even though xhe knew that everyone would be joining us for dinner, not -only- would I be even -less- happy, but it would ruin the meal for the rest of the house, so -nobody- would be happy. Food, in our house, is one of those authority things. You don't change the menu or food protocol without speaking with one of the Keepers (or the chatelaine, if we have one at the time) first... period. It doesn't matter -why-, or what benefit you thought you were bringing... if you change the menu, there will be hell to pay. In someone else's house, that might not even be considered an issue -- perhaps the servant decides what will be served, how it will be prepared, and even shops for the ingredients/brands xhe prefers... hir initiative may extend over that chore completely, while in our home, even the smallest issues about which brands and where things are purchased fall under Keeper authority -- and in some areas of our menu/diet, I hold sole authority. Same goes for things like how laundry is done (allergies to fragrances and certain chemicals make which laundry products we use and how they're used critical for us), and how cleaning is managed. It makes our household substantially more 'managed' than someone else's might be -- and knowing where the boundary is between initiative and authority-issues is crucial, and requires time to learn our household well. That is why newcomers to our home have little room for initiative... while a chatelaine might have initiative in areas where we hold authority, but relinquish to hir pool of knowledge about us and how we like to have things done.
This is why the whole issue of "how much initiative can I take, and is it ok to do something I wasn't specifically told -not- to do? " becomes such a mess. In one person's home, the scope of authority is expansive, and finding things that it doesn't cover are few and far between. In another home, the scope of authority is in narrower rings around specific issues... and that is why the only -real- answer to this question comes from talking to the Keeper(s) and learning the patterns of one's own home.
The one thing that Angel mentioned, though, that is more of an inward-looking thing, and that is -really- important is -why-, especially in a new relationship, one would choose not to check in with the authority figure before making changes. The analogy she gave to her own experiences with curfew strike a chord with me over several servants we've had over the years... servants who tended to use the excuse "I was only thinking of the family" to justify unilateral changes or involvement in some scheme that made a -huge- mess... or that they knew, from experience, we weren't going to be happy about. Am I always right in the decisions that I make? No, not by a long shot. However, when something goes wrong in our home, as a Keeper I have accepted that the onus falls on my shoulders. If I screw up, I bear the burdens... but if one of our servants screws up, I am also bound to bear the attendant burdens. Accepting that responsibility means that I expect to have the authority to manage those responsibilities in the way that I believe will best protect our home. For good or bad, if someone usurps that authority, without bearing concomitant responsibility for the outcome, that is not appropriate, and I agree with Angel that, many times, failure to check about something on which there is a question of whether it is a matter of initiative or delves into that area of authority is often because the individual -knows- that what xhe is considering is outside of her area of initiative, and xhe doesn't want to be denied... the idea of "asking forgiveness is easier than asking permission" has no place our home.
< Message edited by CallaFirestormBW -- 12/13/2008 12:01:51 PM >
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Said to me recently: "Look, I know you're the "voice of reason"... but dammit, I LIKE being unreasonable!!!!"
"Your mind is more interested in the challenge of becoming than the challenge of doing." Jon Benson, Bodybuilder/Trainer
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RE: How can I give you what is already yours? - 
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