Rudest PNM You Had to Deal With
 

Last night I was hanging out with some of my sisters and women from another chapter on campus. We were discussing how recruitment is coming up and one of them brought up a horror PNM story. We were thinking, real life examples might be the best exercises for new members who haven't recruited before to hear so they know the curve balls that sometimes get thrown during recruitment. Plus, some of the stories may provide a good laugh or :eek: for entertainment

My friends story was that during her house tour, she was walking ahead of her PNM, and when she turned around she noticed her PNM was walking slowly and taking a picture of a room with her phone. She asked her what she was doing and the PNM said "I was taking a photo becuase I don't want to live in a house with small rooms"!!

Karma is a bitch!

One of the rudest PNMs was actually talking **** about other chapters saying she only wanted us and did she have to go back to the other parties. It was very holier than thou and she did not get a bid. This girl is on the ridiculous end of extremely gorgeous and I guess she thought she was a shoe-in.

we had a little band(ukeleles, bongos, washboard, more rhythm instruments) that played one day of rush-we were pretty good; local civic groups used to have us come play for them. we played a song that was introduced as having been written by one of the sisters, way back when, as she was deciding whether to accept a proposal of marriage or go to medical school. it is a beautiful song, written to her boyfriend. i was in the band, but also had a rush guest, too, who i passed off to another sister while i performed with the band. this guest kept insisting to anyone who would listen, as the song was being sung, that she had heard that song before, so we had to be lying about who wrote it. i mean, on and on and on about it. well, technically, she was correct-the words are from a robert frost poem, but the girl wrote the music. oy vey! she was not invited back.

I never understand why PNM's are rude like this. It never does them any good. If you don't like a house, suck it up, make small talk and be polite....not that hard! If they act ridiculous at any party at my school they get released from rush.

My roommate soph. year was in a different sorority on campus, and one night after recruitment we were "comparing notes." She told me that one girl, whose last name happened to be Pigg, rolled her eyes at her while she was talking about the sorority's philanthropy, and cut her off with, "Cut the crap - I just want to know if you guys party." Apparently that was the NICEST persona she put on in any of the rooms, because other sororities said that she was literally ignoring them when they'd talk to her. She wanted to be in the "party sorority" and yet she was so rude and superficial to them, that they cut her, too (as all of the other sororities did). In my four years at Pepp, I can only think of two other girls that were released from recruitment completely aside from her.

So, I know it's not NPC recruitment.

At my school SAI, MPhiE, and PMA all have recruitment the same week. It's structured pretty much like NPC recruitment, but on a smaller scale and not as staged.

Anyway, on the first night, we always have a "Meet the Greeks" event with all three orgs, food and get-to-know-you games. There was one girl there, freshman, who went to an SAI and talked crap about the Muphies. Then, she went to a Muphie and talked crap about SAIs. She openly told members that she was there strictly for the food when they tried to talk to her. (We realized that some people came just for the food, but they weren't advertising it). On top of that, she was just rude-flat out rude. And, she did not watch her behavior in the SoM first semester. We did not give her a bid.

As a chapter that struggled with numbers, my sisters and I unfortunately had to deal with a lot of this because the pnms were told they were guaranteed bids if they attended all their parties and maximized their options, which is not true. So, some pnms who wanted to be dropped by us would, at best, give one word answers and looked bored. We’ve had some really bad ones though. There’s always girls who bring up drinking and partying when they know full well that is an off-limits topic, or others who tell us about all of their connections to other sororities and that they only came back because they had to. The absolute worst one that I remember happened to one of my sisters a few years ago. She was talking to a pnm who had transferred from another school, where we happen to also have a chapter. So, my sister asked her something about it, like if she had gotten to know any of our members there. The pnm replied that our sorority sucks there just like it does here. Understandably, my sister started crying right after the party and we obviously did not invite the girl back. This was the most extreme case of pnm rudeness we had that I can recall, but even the mild stuff, like the bored looks and not engaging in conversation really take a toll on chapter morale. And because of numbers and pressure to grow, there often was not a lot we could do. Luckily, we had some great pledge classes and have grown a lot. So, with the improvement, the frequency of rude pnms is decreasing each year.

One of the hardest things that we had to learn with the rude pnms was that we just had to “kill them with kindness,” even though what we really wanted to do was tell them off or walk away or cry. We often had to double recruit when we were smaller, and nothing was worse than one engaged, polite pnm paired with another who would seemingly rather be hit by a bus, because we would see the interested pnm start to look upset or unsure when she saw the kind of reception our members got sometimes. But always, and especially with double recruiting, you can’t let the pnm’s attitude get to you because you are still selling your chapter to everyone else in the room. What I always wished I could tell all the pnms before going through recruitment is this:

No, you are not guaranteed anything. There are girls who go unmatched every year. No one will be forced to take you. Don’t think that if you work to get your bottom choices to cut you that your top choices will have to invite you back. Yes, you should give every chapter a chance, but even if it’s not a good fit, act like a decent human being at every party! If you are as great and coveted as you think you are, then it will be your choice anyway!

For other chapters dealing with this, hang in there. Know your resources and make sure you have someone reliable to go to with concerns, whether this is your recruitment chair, president, adviser, or other sister. If you are that person getting your sisters’ concerns, make sure they know you are handling it. Have all of the necessary numbers at hand to call the panhellenic adviser or vp recruitment. Because too often, these rude pnms get away with it, and the chapter members feel powerless. The same is true if the chapter members don’t know what happens and assume the pnm got away with it. Self-confidence and pride in the chapter goes down the tank. Don’t just take it. Be the perfect gracious hostess, but once the party is over, report the rude pnm and get her KICKED OUT of recruitment. Someone willing to put down anyone in any chapter is not an asset to the greek community. Most of all, even if a pnm is rude to you, always show confidence in yourself and your sisters, no matter how little you feel it, because that shows so much to the pnms. If they see you get upset when another pnm is rude, well, then they see you get upset! No one wants that image at recruitment. You want to be seen as having fun and loving your chapter no matter who tries to bring you down, and when pnms see that pride in your chapter, they realize you must have a chapter to be proud about.

Sorry for the long post but that’s my 2 cents on the topic.

Pizzalove, that's a great post!

These rude PNMs are reminding me of the one that dzsai told us about near the beginning of the "Weird Rush Stories" thread--I believe that she called her "Rude McStupid". Seems like she wanted the members to rush her while she was lounging on the floor?

Somehow I've managed to avoid the rudest of the rude... but I did have one

I am a bio major, and the girl I was bumping was an engineering major- obviously, we're both pretty busy. So I go to bump her, and she tells me, "This is Patty PNM, we were just talking about our majors." This PNM was a math major (I think? something like that) and kept on insisting that her major was too time consuming for sorority life and she was a unique snowflake because only she spent lots of time on her schoolwork and there was no WAY we could understand the position she was in. First of all, why would you start rush if you were really that set against making time for a sorority? And second of all, why on earth would you be the only one with time-consuming classes? It's college, everyone's busy regardless of their major, and the president told you our chapter GPA during the presentation, clearly we are not a group of slackers. Learn some time management!

ETA: PizzaLove, stories like yours make we wish that there was a way to report PNMs that rude to panhellenic so that other groups would be aware of their "other side" and cut them. There are a lot of logistical issues with this, but...if it could work it would be nice.

When I was an advisor, my girls told me about a PNM who took a bite from a cookie (we served food at every party back in the day) and said, "Ew! This has animal fat in it!" Then she threw the partially eaten cookie back on the tray.

It was routine for the chapter president to say a few words to everyone at the end of a party, and I remember that some PNMs would continue to chat among themselves while she was speaking.

The rudeness that still bugs me, though, was from some other advisors. We were still doing bid matching by hand, so one night I went to the Greek office promptly after the pref party, still in my Laura Ashley dress and pearls. We were waiting around for all the advisors and bid lists, so I tried to break the ice with some new advisors from one sorority. They were wearing embellished sweatsuits, which, er, weren't my thing, but I did say, "You look like you'll be comfortable for the long night ahead," to which one of them snapped, "That's because we dressed properly." Then they went back to talking to each other. Pretty nice, especially considering that for years before that, that sorority never had anyone present for bid matching, so an extra alum or national visitor from KD had occasionally handled their list.

It's totally possible and happens frequently at the campus where I advise. When PNMs are inexcusably rude, the chapter reports it to the Greek advisor, who posts a note on the front page of ICS (the recruitment software). The chapters can then do with the information what they want.

We had a legacy who came through - her grandmother was a sister, and this was the last granddaughter, and the only one who had come to a school with a her sorority.

Grandma had sent us a long letter and a collage of pictures of her granddaughter. So we knew everything about this chick.

When our sister greeted her and mentioned we'd heard a lot about her from her grandmother, her reply was:

"My grandmother is crazy, and I am not joining this sorority." Our sister burst into tears.

Our advisors would NOT let us cut her, but it would have been sweet to let the other sororities know about her.

It would have been sweeter to call Grandma and have little snowflake cut out of the will.

On the other side: When I was doing recruitment, during the FIRST era of mini skirts (but a few years after "hours" were abolished) I was doing recruitment for AEPhi. As I mentioned, Jews went AEPhi and all others went elsewhere. (ok, we had two or three exceptions).

A girl came through, blue chip all the way. (I still remember her name btw.) We had a wonderful conversation. We "knew" that she would never accept an invitation back...but she did. She kept us until Prefs when pressure got to her.

She was upfront in the end. She was being pressured by friends and family to go to a different house and to not be a ground breaker. But she loved us and wanted us to know that she wasn't dipping in the Jewish pond for s**** and giggles.

No matter what she was lovely and elegant and only eighteen. And she had class, spoke honestly and, she was truly the perfect ten: and never said a mean word tp anyone at any house.

do you know what happened to this little darling?

^^^I'd like to know as well.

And, I hope she didn't join SK. Wouldn't have been fair to the chapter.

[mini hijack]

I guess I don't get that (behavior). From my viewpoint, yes we may be in different houses but 1. we are all greek and 2. we are all NPC sisters together. While we were all founded at different times and schools, I believe that overall the underlying principals of our respective sororities are generally the same.

I had friends in high school and as soon as we started college and went different houses it was like we couldn't be friends anymore, which I thought (and still think) is kind of lame.

[end mini hijack]

back to the regularly scheduled thread

OK, this girl wasn't the rudest, per se, but a bit too candid. As a junior, I ended up talking to a girl from a smaller town in our state that was known for being a bit...redneck. She was extremely pretty (spitting image of Jessica the Baby Vampire in True Blood), had a great smile, quick witted, and was initially very charming, albeit dressed a little to casually. We started talking about majors, and it came out that she was interested in architecture/design. My fault for asking, but I said, "Well, how do you like the layout of our house?" I immediately heard how awful our green carpet was (...I was not a fan either, to tell the truth) then she started telling me how well two other sorority houses were laid out compared to ours. As I was the last girl she talked to at the party, no one else heard the conversation and I did not raise it. She did not get invited back to our house, but she joined another house (which had recently reorganized, and was considered "up and coming"). I ended up sitting at the same table as her and her date at a fraternity dance the following spring and we ended up talking quite a bit (our dates were both tools and were too busy "bromancing" graduating brothers), and she ended up apologizing in retrospect and explained she was just nervous, which I understood. I ran into her a couple more times on campus (she was an officer in her chapter her sophomore year) and she was always quite friendly.

i had a girl last spring that asked everyone in my bumping group what their parents did for a living and where they vacationed. :eek: i heard from the other bumpers in my group that she had refused to talk to them - the only reason she talked to me was because i told her that my dad was a retired lawyer which was fine with her until she pressed for more info and i mentioned that he had done a lot of pro bono work during his career tied to the chicano rights movement. she did wind up getting a bid form another group though :rolleyes:

I guess we were lucky back in my day because women pretty much accepted only invitations that they wanted and there were no consequences to that. Then again, there were only 4 chapters and quota was like 9 or 10. Women were never intentionally rude though and I don't remember any experiences like these.

While this girl wasn’t rude to our faces, she still was probably the rudest girl my sorority has had to deal with in a while. (sorry the back story is long, but my undergrad’s recruitment is set-up a little differently than most schools)
At my undergrad, recruitment events are held during the evening of the week as well as weekends. If a girl cannot make an event (because she has class, is sick, can’t get off of work, etc) but is still interested in a particular sorority, they are told to send a note to that group’s house (after the first day, girls are not required to visit all groups).
Our recruitment is semi-structured so that each group has a certain time slot and no groups overlap for the first week of recruitment (recruitment is 2 ½ weeks long). However my junior year a student passed away and the memorial service was scheduled for the same time as one of our events. Since many of my sisters were friends with the girl & wanted to be at the service, the Greek advisor moved our time slot to the same time as one of the other sororities.
That night, when it came time for voting, our recruitment chair read any notes we had received for that event. When we got to one girl’s note it read ‘Hi, I would love to be at your event tonight but it’s the same time as XY and I’d rather be at their event.’
I’m pretty sure she did not get an invite for the upcoming closed event (we alternate between open & closed events) but she showed up to the next open saying how much she has missed us. Fast forward a week and she did get a bid to the sorority she told us she rather be at. However, she did show-up our events almost to the end.

I know the regulations are different between my sorority's recruitment and Panhellenic recruitment and I also know that there is A LOT of pressure on the members to be classy at all times...but... somebody would have had to slap a hand over my mouth and ushered me away post-haste in both of these situations.

She definitely did not become our sister, and thankfully, she didn't even come back for second round. Apparently, we didn't make it up high enough on her list. Tooooo baaaaad.

Once we were rid of her, we washed our hands of her, and I hope she ended up somewhere she was happy.

And thankfully, that wasn't with us. :)

Nice post, PizzaLove. Words to live by always, not just during Rush...er, Recruitment. :D

The closest we had to a rude PNM when I was active, was a psycho PNM.

It was my sophomore year, my first time rushing on the other side and the first time our local had been allowed to participate in FR alongside the 4 NPC sororities. It was pretty obvious that we were a Jewish sorority (when the sisters have last names like Rosenberg and Segal, it's a dead giveaway) so a lot of non-Jewish PNMs dropped us. :( However, "Jenny" figured she was a shoe-in because she was Jewish and we were the smallest chapter on campus - how could we possibly cut HER????

She was invited back to two chapters for the first invite-only round. At the time, chapters made their own name tags for PNMs, and PNMs were allowed to keep the tags. Jenny went to XYZ first, and then came to us wearing her XYZ-issued name tag (a no-no - you can keep the name tags but you're supposed to pocket them). The message was obvious - rush me hard or I'm pledging XYZ. I spoke with her and it took me about five seconds to determine she would not be good for our chapter. Still, I was polite to her ...

She was cut by both chapters before pref.

She came to our informal rush later that semester. We cut her again.

She found her home in a service org - so, good for her. Still, *cough*nutcase*cough*

I think that's probably one of the biggest things sorority life has given me for regular life -- how to smile and be nice when someone is treating you like absolute crap. You just learn to rise above it. :)

Weirdly, it was VERY common for both the PNMs and the Sisters to ask these type of questions, albeit very candidly, during (rush) when I was an active. One of my best friends from another chapter was cut from her legacy chapter - where her grandmother had been a founder, and both aunts & her mother were sisters - because she hadn't been to Europe yet! Worse, they TOLD her grandmother the reason! But it all worked out well, as she became an ADPi!

Similarly, the worst PNM I can remember dropped the F-bomb during a party. So many sisters were so upset that, even though she got a bid, our chapter was torn in half over her - and she never did get initiated!

So, if you think Recruitment is tough now, it used to be even more restrictive!

Once, a friend of one of our sisters happened upon an online journal of a PNM on which she posted her rankings of the houses on campus and all her thoughts on the first round. Her thoughts were negative, to say the least, about all but a select few chapters on campus.

Word got around pretty quickly as people from other chapters found out, too. The girl deleted the post, but the damage was done.

Mini hijack, I did not learn this from sorority life but from working in retail. Im sure people who have any sort of job where they deal with people knows you cannot do anything but smile and be nice when people don't treat you like a human being. So many times I've wanted tell a person how I really feel when they are being rude, but you can't without mega consequences. All you can do is hope that person learns, whether it be from a sorority/job/life how to treat others. Ugh.

It depends on the context and overall environment. Based on my GLO/job/life experiences, there are GLO/job/life situations where you can and should do more than smile when people are rude. You don't have to cuss them out (that works too in some contexts) but you don't have to just smile and/or let it upset you.

I am pretty tolerant in my professional life, but I still let people know where my boundaries are. I have no problem speaking up, but I do it with an understanding that I'm representing my company.

However, when it comes to my sorority work, things are a little different. In the case of a rude interest...which I've never witnessed...while I wouldn't curse at her, she would get a tone and a slicing southernism from me at the very least.

I probably don't have to say anything at all in the first place, because I can't hide my emotions. My cutabish look is pretty apparent.

I'm in full agreement here. As I've gotten older, I've gotten a better handle on the proportion my reaction should be in relation to the offense. I no longer sit and smile, unless I've been expressly asked to do so. Even then...

Dear future siggy,

I'd love you to join me in my signature space. I don't know the magenta will work, but maybe something in a blue will work? Let's talk. Thaaaaaanks!

xoxo, tld221

I think part of what makes people cry or get otherwise thrown off their game when this happens during recruitment is that it's so shocking. I think most of us have worked in jobs where the occasional jerk is par for the course; you learn to deal with it; and it's not really that unnerving. But recruitment is typically really different.

A couple of the posters here are UGA people too, and the general rapport of recruitment there is incredibly friendly and kind of gushingly supportive, even with people who you may not be that crazy about and don't expect to see again.

So when you run into one of the tiny number of people who will actually say something intentionally, directly mean, it's a little bit like having cold water thrown on you or getting slapped. You are just stunned. It's probably the shock more than the rudeness that upsets you.

On a different topic, and I may have mentioned this before: I confess that I asked a girl in my rush group when we were both going through what her dad did for a living, but it was because she had lived in a bunch of different places. (Weirdly maybe, I hadn't yet known families who relocated for the mom's career.) My dad was in the army, so I wondered if she was a military brat too. I didn't really think about the implications of the question until I saw her exchange a knowing look with one of her friends. Sometimes, that question is a looking for a marker of social class, and sometimes, you sincerely want to know about the career, I guess.

UGAalum, I think that would fall into a reasonable question for just the reason you stated. If I met a girl who had lived in 5 states and 6 countries, I'd probably be asking why too.

One of the hardest things to get used to living in Dubai is the first question you ALWAYS get asked is where are you from, and the second is what does your husband do. It seems sooooo anti-feminist, but the fact is 99% of the women I meet are here because of their husbands' jobs. Different context makes it not offensive.

I think it also depends on when the rudeness is as well. During open houses, the rude girls don't really bother as many people because the emotional toll of recruitment hasn't hit and your able to brush it off.

The worst is when they are rude later, due to being cut by a chapter they liked or just still having their heart set on one chapter. The worst I saw was a girl who was a legacy that came to our pref party. She had been very sweet the entire week and then at pref night was so rude and dismissive of the sorority ending with stating she was there to make her mom happy but had no interest in us. The girl who preffed her and really liked her throughout the week and was devastated afterwards. She ended up at another chapter, thankfully.

You do when you work where I do in retail, unfortunately. They only thing I can do is hope that when someone treats them like that (if they are younger and have not had a retail/service job) they learn how wrong they were and you never treat people that way. I know I do my best in all situations to treat others how I would like to be treated if I was working their job, and I learned that from being treated like shit at mine.

*sideeye*

The worst for our chapter I think was the picture incident that happened to my friend, because it was so in-your-face, but I had a girl that would answer with one word or shrug to almost everything I tried to talk to her about (and they were open ended questions) and after her response would look around the room but not at me. After five awkward minutes of one-way conversation, I said nicely "I'm sorry if I'm perceiving this wrong, but it seems like you are a little bored talking about my chapter. We don't have to talk about it but we do have to talk for the rest of the party" and smiled at her. She was a legacy at a different chapter, and apologized but said she was only interested in that chapter. We ended up having a decent conversation after that, although I found her impolite still for being so closed.

For some reason, I have had multiple PNMs say things like "If a chapter you don't like ranks you really high, it will take a spot of one you do like". They seem to be confused at the mutual selection process, and are convinced that if they are unwillingly back at our chapter, we knocked out their first pick that in reality didn't invite them back.