Your Ideas Are My Ideas.

I was hanging out in the Kokshetau English resource center this evening, Globus, when the phone rang. The local supervisor of the center answered it. Her side of the conversation went on for a while, grew increasingly exasperated, and was mostly phrases like:

"If you want help, we'll help you implement your own plans."
...
"Look, maybe you want to come in and talk to us."
...
"Maybe you want to come take part in the activities /we/ lead."
...
"We can't just give you all our textbooks. We use them for our own classes."
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"We think up our own clubs and activities. If you want help implementing your /own/ ideas, come talk to us."
...
"You would just be doing exactly what we do!"

Apparently, a grade school teacher (who had never been to Globus) wanted to start her own Kokshetau English resource center. She had to go make her pitch to some government entity the next morning. But she hadn't thought through what the center would actually do. So she called Globus the evening before, and demanded - not requested, but demanded, which was what upset our usually calm, kind-natured, director - detailed descriptions of and materials for what Globus did, so she could do the exact same thing. The prize quote from her was this:

"Give us your ideas. I'm going to the director tomorrow to tell him about my ideas."