Steppin' It Up A Notch

On Jan. 16, 2008 at EMI Orientation in Colorado Springs, we were split up into groups of 4 to discuss a hypothetical scenario. The scenario was this: You are in a foreign country meeting with the leaders to teach them about disaster response. They treat people of lower positions disrespectfully and you are expected to do likewise. If you don't you will lose credibility. What do you do? After discussing it, we concluded that we couldn't justify treating people with disrespect. We also realized that all the groups probably came to the same conclusion so as a joke, we were going to answer in the opposite manner. I was the spokesperson and said "Our group decided that given the circumstances, it would be appropriate to act just like the foreigners... and maybe even step it up a notch." So that's where it came from and somehow it stuck.