Firecrackers and Razor Blades: Standing Up to Bullies and Bureaucracy

For the past month, I have had the privilege of helping my friend Sam navigate an unimaginable tragedy. Her business partner and best friend, Katrina, Katrina’s husband, and three of their children were swept away and killed in a flash flood. Katrina’s oldest daughter, Lydia, survived and, in an instant, was left without her mother and most of her family.

I had mentored Katrina and Sam as they built their business. For three consecutive years, they were recognized as Best of State in the spa category. They weren’t just business partners; they were dear friends.

After standing beside Lydia, holding space for a grieving family, and laying her best friend to rest, Sam had to face one of those brutal realities that simply doesn’t pause because your world has fallen apart. The business still had to operate. Payroll doesn’t care that you are grieving. Vendors don’t stop sending invoices because your partner died. Employees still have mortgages, groceries, and children depending on them.

This is one of the raw realities of owning a business, and this is where real courage lives, not in the moments when everything is going wonderfully and you’re standing on a stage accepting an award. It is when you have to somehow pull yourself out of the rubble, put one foot in front of the other, and navigate the brutal mechanics of keeping something alive while your best friend is gone.

Sam asked me to help her stabilize things, and I considered that an enormous honor. We brought in attorneys, business valuation experts, and accountants. We gathered legal documents and worked our way through ownership, authorization, banking, accounting, and all the other delightful little details nobody on earth should have to think about while mourning someone they love.

And I want to make something very clear. Most people were absolutely wonderful. Banks, businesses, attorneys, accountants, and individuals showed genuine compassion. They did their jobs with grace, humanity, and a little common sense.

Then there was Mountain America Credit Union. Despite the legal documentation we provided, Sam continued to be denied access to critical business funds. Credit cards were put on hold, and for more than three weeks she went back again and again and again. Bring us this document. Okay, now bring us that document. We need another signature. Now we need another authorization. At one point, even Katrina’s parents came into the office on behalf of the trust to validate everything.

Still nothing.

Meanwhile, payroll wasn’t going to wait. Vendors kept calling. Employees still needed to be paid, and Sam was trying to hold the entire thing together while mourning her best friend.

Eventually, I had seen enough.

There is a detail in the story of Christ and the money changers that I have always found striking. Christ didn’t simply burst into the temple in an uncontrolled rage and start lashing out. He sat down and deliberately braided a whip. Think about that for a minute. He knew exactly what He was going to do, and He did it with intention.

I believe deeply in being calm. I believe in patience, grace, diplomacy, understanding both sides, and trying very hard to find the reasonable path forward. That is my default, and I think it should be yours, too.

But there comes a point when patience is no longer patience. Sometimes bureaucracy becomes a weapon. Sometimes people with authority forget that there is an actual human being standing on the other side of their policies. And sometimes being endlessly “measured” is simply another word for being unwilling to stand up when somebody needs you.

So I took three long, slow, calming breaths. And then I got out the firecrackers and razor blades. I began cutting with precision and putting firecrackers into dark moist body cavities. I escalated. I told the people jamming this thing up, directly and without much room for misunderstanding, that this would be resolved today. They could help me resolve it themselves or I was going to resolve it for them by direct escalation through my network to the CEO and the governing financial services body in the state.

Once I finally reached the decision maker, and once he understood that someone on the other side was not afraid to bite and that this was about to become a considerably larger problem than he wanted on his desk, the math changed quickly. Whether he had misunderstood the situation or was simply trying to protect the institution, he found a way to save face, get it resolved, and unjam the account.

Good. I was grateful.

But here is the part that bothered me. It never should have required firecrackers and razor blades in the first place.

Which brings me back to my very short zero-tolerance list: Bullies are right near the top.

People, and particularly organizations, that use their position, authority, bureaucracy, or power to demean, manipulate, intimidate, or make life harder for somebody who is already vulnerable absolutely light me up.

Most of the time, I am a calm, level-headed business executive. I believe in slowing things down, taking a breath, understanding both sides, and finding a reasonable solution. But I also have a personal ethos that says: Do the right thing and damn the torpedoes.

Sometimes doing the right thing requires diplomacy and patience. And every once in a while, it requires firecrackers and razor blades.

You need to know what you stand for. Your values. Your principles. The things that move you forward and shape how you build your life, your business, your family, and your relationships. But equally important, you need to know what you stand against. What will you simply not tolerate? What are the lines you will not allow someone to cross? What are you willing to fight against, even when fighting against it is uncomfortable, inconvenient, or expensive?

Because standing for something means nothing if you won’t stand against what opposes it. And sometimes we simply have to growl.

If you possess authority over another human being, whether you are a banker, executive, government official, manager, parent, teacher, or business owner, you hold a sacred responsibility in your hands. If you are inflicting misery on people simply because you can, stop it. If you are making someone jump through unnecessary hoops because you’ve got the biggest britches on the block, knock it off. And especially when the person standing in front of you is already wounded, grieving, frightened, or overwhelmed, for heaven’s sake, don’t make yourself another weight they have to carry.

Policies matter. Controls matter. Rules matter. Of course they do. But people matter more.

So here is the question I have been asking myself, and maybe it is worth asking yourself as well: What do you stand against? What will you not tolerate? Where are your lines? And when somebody vulnerable needs protecting, are you willing to make a little noise, show your teeth, and, when absolutely necessary, get out the razor blades and light the firecrackers?

The world needs people who know what they stand for. But it also desperately needs people who have enough backbone to stand against the things that violate those values. And sometimes, the world just needs a few of us willing to growl.

Rich Christiansen