So street vendors and the city long ago struck a tacit deal: the city allows vendors to sell food but reserves the right to kick them out of practically any spot at any time, and vendors keep their heads down, careful not to upset their relationships with the nearby brick-and-mortar businesses, with the police, and with each other.
"People who are far closer to her than me have made every reasonable appeal to her and she has declined," said a grandson of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's, who asked that his name not be used because he did not want to upset family relationships.
"They said, 'Would it upset our relationship with you if we sold these weapons to the Peruvian government?" one of the officials said.
Even some retailers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they didn't want to upset their relationship with the company, said it often built on others' successful ideas.
And it was understandable, too, that the Obama White House would hesitate to upset the relationship in the last few years, with Egypt in the throes of what seemed as if it might be a democratic revolution.
But with so much distrust, it would not take much in the coming weeks disagreement over Iran, say, or on lifting the EU arms embargo on China, which France has pushed to upset the relationship again.
"My favorite scenes were meeting suppliers," said a former Apple executive who had traveled with Mr. Cook frequently and asked to remain anonymous because he did not want to upset their relationship.
John Paul II's addition of new mysteries, which are not required for reciting the rosary, was intended to revive interest in the practice; some traditional Catholics, however, have rejected the new mysteries, believing that they upset the relationship between the original number of mysteries and their corresponding psalms.
He seems to have assumed that the small joke he told at Trump's expense in Davos is either too trivial or, perhaps, too obscure to upset their relationship; he may also know that bullies only respect those who, at least occasionally, flick their earlobes in passing.
If a platonic friendship might upset a relationship we hope will be 'the one,' we accept different priorities," Brandt says.
