Be Nice.
The other day, I went out for brunch with my wife and house-mate. Coming out of the restaurant, we decided to head over to an art supply store, two buildings down. We were stopped by an obnoxious woman who "informed" us that where we were parked was for the plaza with the restaurant only, and not for the art store: we would have to move our vehicle.
This made me see red. I seriously contemplated confronting her: we had just eaten at the plaza, so we'd essentially paid for our parking. There's no way to easily move the car from here to there: it took me a full five minutes to drive around a very large block to move the car 100 yards. We were only going to be in the art store for 10 minutes, and there were plenty of parking spaces in the plaza lot. There was no need to interrupt us, no need to be so snippy, no need to waste our time. She had no right.
I kept it to myself, though. Still, I was still fuming an hour later. Part of me wished I had stood my ground.
What do you do when people aren't being nice?
1 comment:
I ask myself "Do I desire to maintain a functional relationship with this person?"
Then I ask myself "Do I need to do so, even if I don't want to?"
If both of those answer back "no", as I'd guess they would have in this situation with a random stranger in a parking lot, THEN I GIVE THEM A PIECE OF MY MIND. Loudly and with gusto.
As you can imagine from how long I spent working retail, I've asked myself that pair of questions quite a few times over the years. The second question is usually where I get tripped up.
Post a Comment