Quote:
Originally Posted by dknv
Aha, you got the special Helen treatment. Believe it or not, when she gives someone extra attention, it IS because she cares, though caring about your feelings or how you take it isn't part of her demeanor especially when she's a safety steward. (I just wish she were the safety steward on deck when the bicycle rider was cruising along the yellow line at our June event, Patty tried to ask that guy nicely to stay clear and he just cursed at her. I'll bet Helen would've taken his head off.)
I'm pretty sure I remember some heated exchanges with Helen & Dean in the past. But at the point that Scott, you got the talking to, Helen was done chewing on Dean, and by then already knew about some of Dean's driving experiences, that he was an instructor, blah blah blah, whereas she did not necessarily know your background or your mindset about safety. Hence, the 'talking to'. But if you guys had the special Helen treatment and really feel strongly offended you can always raise it up to Matt (oops, sorry Matt, part of the role eh) or Jim Gandy, and they can have a conversation with her to ask her to tone it down.
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It wasn't the actual talking to that bothered me. It was the unloading of her responsibility as safety steward on the drivers. If she felt the course was unsafe, the solution is not telling the drivers to slow down, it's fixing the course.
Now, I was eventually going to find a way through the course without spinning, simply because spinning isn't going to win the round... but getting chewed out over something that's not my responsibility (poor course design) doesn't help the situation much. That situation just stuck with me as a prime example of Helen-ism.
In all actuality, her behavior as grid-master (getting cars out of order, yelling at the drivers that are attempting to let her know it's their turn to run, etc) is far more disruptive to the event. I feel bad for the n00bs that she may wallop... I know she means well, so I'm not going to let her attitude ruin my day... but I can imagine some poor first timer getting he head bitten off and deciding "f-this... autocross is run by assholes!".