Hi John. I'm just now getting to this terrific post. Thanks Jane Perdue for sharing it again recently.

I could say "ditto, ditto, ditto" to all that has been said. So, I'm going to respond to one of your concluding questions: When have you been unreasonable for a very good reason?

You know this appeals to me because I can be a bit willful. But this time it was for such a good reason :)

As many of you know I used to be an HR manager. I'm going to have to be cryptic to maintain confidentiality, but you'll get the gist.

I was asked by another colleague for a piece of personal information about an employee, "for a very good reason." Well, I didn't  agree that it was for a very good reason. Given his job he needed to check a box on a report, and I wasn't giving him the information so he could complete his report.

It was a very sensitive piece of personal information. If it had gotten out that I shared it so this colleague could "do his job" and check a box, I would lose all credibility. It was my job to indeed keep employee information confidential and certainly not access it just because I could.

He got his boss involved. He got my boss involved. I still refused. In fact, my boss had recently told me it was my job to keep this information confidential, yet she now asked me if I just couldn't cooperate with the request. Well. No.

I had said this to him before, but after a month, I said it again. I suggested he contact our Legal department to see if him having this info was really a good idea, just so that he could check that box on the report. He reported back to me that Legal told him to let it go for the same reasons I had been offering. He never acknowledged that.

So what. I did my job, despite that fact that to many I appeared VERY unreasonable. (THANK YOU LEGAL DEPARTMENT for backing me up.)