Name one person, give one job

Two things, and the first is contested inside these conversations, so this page describes it and does not ask you to do it. Several single accounts walked up to the person being bothered and greeted them as an old friend — a name, ‘there you are, come and sit with us’ — so that the person could leave with them and the harasser was not engaged; one account says the person is confused for a second and then grateful, and one note says the technique is taught in civic-courage courses. But four exchanges in the same conversations run two to two, two to two, two to two and four to two on it: it can confuse or frighten the person if they do not recognise the name, one caution with two accounts says; it fails if the two people know each other, and one contraindication says that in that case the dynamic is unknown and the intervener can become the target; one account watched the person run away; one caution says using a real name is risky if the harasser knows it; and one prerequisite for it, in the accounts’ own words, is a willingness to tell a ‘half convincing lie’, which is why this page carries it as what they did and not as its counsel. The second thing needs no pretence and the accounts give it too: ask the person directly, ‘are you okay?’, and keep your eyes on them while the other person tries to answer for them; stand or sit near them; ask the harasser a mundane question — directions, the time — to break the moment; or, one account says, simply be the person they can pretend to be meeting. If you read it wrong, one account says a plain ‘sorry, I misread that’ ends it, and the person can wave you off. Two contraindications set the edge: do not approach if you would frighten the person more than the harasser does, and do not use any of this if it looks like a couple’s argument — what to do then is a gap in these conversations. What to do if the person will not leave with you is a gap in these conversations too.

No, in three separate conversations and thirteen of the fourteen contraindications in these conversations, and they are unusually unanimous for a record that argues about everything else: do not physically intervene in a fight if you are untrained, alone, smaller, drunk or outnumbered; four cautions with two accounts each say people who did were punched, cut with broken glass, stabbed, shot or killed, and one account was knifed for asking two men why they were fighting. Call the police, whose job and training it is; one exchange, two accounts to one, has the one saying that words alone can be what stops the harm in the moment, and are sometimes needed, and another, two to one, says only step in as a group large enough to hold both parties, and if anyone turns on you, back off and call. One caution says the police can also escalate; the response is that if there is a weapon or someone is about to be badly hurt, you call anyway. In a bar or a club, the accounts split on the door staff, three accounts to three in one exchange and two-to-four and one-to-three in others: some say tell the staff, they are sober, trained, insured and it is their job, and good management fires the ones who ignore harassment; five accounts in one note say the staff they met had no training and one former doorman describes a club that trained its team weekly; one caution says staff may not act on what they did not see, and will watch more closely if you report it. Tell them anyway, one account says, and the manager if the door does not act. And in all of it the accounts say the thing you can do is the thing in the title: you are not the one who has to stop it, you are the one who makes sure someone has been called.

For the child, the accounts’ practical line, once the arguments about who is allowed to approach are set aside as this page sets them aside: check whether an adult nearby is already dealing with it, because one objection says what looks like a lost child is sometimes a busy parent; involve staff or another adult rather than taking the child anywhere private; and one account says the parent is usually searching at the same moment. For the person on the ground: one account describes a group of friends walking past someone unconscious on the grass, each assuming the others had it handled, until one of them insisted on checking; she had stopped breathing, and she lived because of it; one account describes standing in a library unable to be the one who called, until they handed the call to the librarian and it was made. Three conversations say the barrier is the assumption that someone else will, and one account calls it an unconscious behaviour rather than a moral failing; two conversations say the famous 1960s case that gave it a name was misreported — the neighbours did help — and one correction says the effect existed before the case and was only named by it. One caution says the crowd is not a source of first aid: crowds give wrong instructions, one account says, like taking a helmet off an injured rider, so give the jobs and do not take the advice. One caution says the risk of pointing at one person is that if they do nothing, the crowd assumes the job is taken; two accounts answer that if they do not pull out a phone, you still have a crowd of backups who have seen the failure — so, this page adds, point again.