Daily Observations Of Humanity
I love 'taking notes' of things I see when I'm out doing errands around town. It's amazing to find things in every day life that inspire you and I can't tell you how many times I 'witnessed' something in every day life that turned into a blog post or some piece of content.
I'm a sponge of this thing called life, and love getting ideas for blog posts just by...Living every day life :)
However...There is a dark side of this.
Sometimes, what you witness is the ugly side of humanity. And while the story I'm about to share seems pretty rotten, hopefully it inspires us to all be a little better each and every day.
Let me set the stage...
Do you guys remember about 2 years ago?
It was at the height of the pandemic, and life as we knew it basically stopped. The only people that seemed to be able to 'work' were labeled as essential workers. Healthcare, emergency services and the guys and gals that ran the fast food restaurants.
At the height of the pandemic, these every day 'heroes' were celebrated, at least up here in Canada.
I guess that 'hero label' expired...
Today I was standing in line at a local coffee shop and a middle aged guy stormed up to the front of the line.
Visibly upset, he tore into the young lady who was behind the register and demanded 'hot chocolate not chocolate flavored water'...His words of course.
The young lady seemed struck by how rude he was but smiled and went to replace the drink he was furious about. I mean, he was MAD. She returned with the fresh drink and then continued to talk down to her about how awful it was that he got 'chocolate flavored water' instead of the hot chocolate.
I just stood there scratching my head and thought to myself....This guy must have been having a really bad day. But my goodness, why on earth would you take that anger out of a teenager working at a coffee shop?
Everyone in the line just looked at this guy and shook their heads....
Is this how we should be treating each other?
Look, I'm no saint and God knows, I've lost my cool a few times before but it made me really gut check myself on how much every day people put up with the rest of us...
My challenge to myself, is to never get THAT upset over something so trivial. It's not worth it. You know that old saying that life is short, there is no reason for us to be rude to anyone we encounter each and every day.
I dunno, maybe this post is jut me thinking out loud because I was so taken at the anger some guy had over a drink...But also to put it out there in the universe. Just an act of kindness every day, may be exactly what we all need in this crazy world.
Give it freely! You never know whose day you may make from smiling and treating them with respect....
Crazy talk I know!
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Be Nice, Be brave, and behave were my grandmas 3 rules. I still try to live by them.
!PIZZA
Golden rules man. I dunno where we went wrong as a species.
!CTP
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Oh I really feel bad about that. I hope the teenager won't take it seriously and for that guy, maybe he's having a bad day but he shouldn't act like that. When I feel mad about something, I don't want to include other people. 😞
Yeah that's what I think too...Must have been having a rough day but still no excuse.
!CTP
Having a bad day doesn't seem an enough reason to be mean. I know some people can't control their anger in the public. It's saddening.
It often happens people are angry at something else and drop their anger on someone else. It is not justified. I have even observed people who are very polite with their friends or (with whoever they are at the moment) but show ridiculous rudeness towards their sub-ordinates.
Life is certainly too short to spread love. Why to waste it in spreading negative emotions.
Agreed. And I mean, it doesn't take much. Just a smile and keep the negativity to ourselves. Utopian thoughts lol
!CTP
Having worked "behind counters" for a large part of my life, it seems like it is often people who are in some way feeling powerless who vent their frustrations at those in the service industry.
I have a feeling that the dark side of a couple of years of lockdowns unfortunately served to remove some of people's filters, when it comes to civil conduct.
That experience just sounded so bad. I remember listening to a podcast and they said that we shouldn't sweat the small stuff. It just saddens me that some people are too self entitled. I hope that the teenager didn't get traumatized by this event.
We can always control whats inside and not outside, so it will always be a choice if you'd get angry. I hope that there would be more happy people in this world
It's not crazy talk at all. It's very true
We shouldn't let our anger out on strangers just cos there won't be immediate repercussions.
It's important to be kind to people.
If you don't have anything nice to say, it's best to keep your mouth shut.
Thanks for sharing your experience, it's definitely a teachable moment for readers.
Agreed, life would be so much better if you did not behave like a grocery bag filled with cat turds.
That said, the above example is unfortunately rather common here, people losing their shit over small things... and I have seen and heard of worse... Not a fan of that behavior either.
This probably comes mostly from the stressful life of the most of the people. The most of the people do a job/work that they do not like (or they even hate it). And there are a lot of pressure and responsibility on many people. Seeing this fact, I cannot really blame them. It must be terrible to do an eight (or more hours) per day job that you do not like (or you even hate). Many people wake up, go to work all day, come home at the evening, tired, then sleep, then do it again, until they become a pensioner (or die). Living such a lifestyle is very stressful. I am happy and glad that my life is not like this.
True... but we all have stressful lives. Why take it out on the grocery till worker for no reason? Why take it out on the regular people that you live alongside?
This is misdirected anger and actually solves nothing.
This aspect is also true. Many people receive undeserved and/or unreasonable amount of anger from others.
Its people like this that always kept me woking in the kitchen for so many years. If I worked with the public and someone talked to me like that I would probably get fired for my response. 😁
I don't know but every time I walk on the streets, I randomly smile to the people I walk by and most of them just smile back, communicating without having to say any words. Some don't.
Life can sometimes be very chaotic and hectic but I discovered that putting in a happy face can be a good antidote to it. There will always be someone who has it worse than you.
Never start a fight, never back out of one! I don't know if it's correct but it's what I was taught.
I was in a situation like that one time when I was younger. A lady was just ripping into the girl behind the counter. When it was my turn to order I made sure to let the girl know she was doing a great job. Loudly, so I was sure the old lady heard me say it. The sad thing is, as I get older my patience seems to be less and I often wonder if I am more like the old lady than the person I used to be. I hope not. Like you said, we all have bad days, but we need to gut check ourselves sometimes.
I think a large part of the media controlled narrative is going to make anyone hero or the vilian. And they are going to be struggling a lot on that part. I personally feel that most of such trends and the psychology of people are kind of connected lately more than newspaper ever could make them.
That's awful. People are human, we make mistakes.
It is very important to talk about such cases, maybe such people will see how ugly it looks from the outside! I often step in to defend sellers in such cases. After all, at work they can't stand up for themselves properly...
!CTP
Thank you. Although I try my best on being Mr. Positive and work on my attitude, some days.....
Thankfully not lately. I guess my personal growth is working.
But I have been that middle aged man.
Since I became and give face to face customer service every day when i get bad customer service or someone in customer service lies strait to my face...
I have been there like the man you talk about.
I have been working on myself to stop doing it. Smile and say thank you .
Bradley