A couple of weeks ago, I came across a quote from Abraham Lincoln that really resonated with me. Okay, some argue that he didn’t say it at all, while others say that he was repeating what he had heard someone else say, and wasn’t actually speaking for himself. The semantics of its origin don’t really interest me, because for me it isn’t the speaker that makes the words powerful, it’s the sentiment behind them. So Abraham Lincoln or Joe Blow on the corner, or whoever else, I still like the quote.
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad.” How true are those words? They’ve really stuck with me. Then the other day I was in a bad mood, and just generally feeling emotionally crappy, when I realized that it had all stemmed from one thing. A couple of months ago we had this series of passive aggressive notes left in the restroom at work. They cracked me up, I wrote a blog post about it. Shortly thereafter, the notes stopped. Until last week, when a new one cropped up. The tone of said note, basically accused the women on my floor of not knowing how to properly flush toilets and leaving messes behind for those who came after.
Now don’t get me wrong, I hate walking into a stall and being confronted by the business of the last person that used it. Gross! However, the specific stall that this note was left in is a bit persnickety. If you don’t hold the handle down FOREVER it doesn’t flush completely. So if somebody doesn’t know this, it’s going to leave something behind. It has nothing to do with the person, it has to do with the toilet. For whatever reason, this note put a burr in my saddle, so I grabbed a pen and fixed the note so that it asked people to hold down the handle for several seconds instead of accusing full-grown women of not knowing how to flush. I may have been a little worked up and gotten a little snarky as well. I’ll admit it. Well this triggered somebody else (I don’t know if it was the original poster, or someone new) to respond back.
The next thing I know, I’m in a horrible mood, all because of this stupid note! Adding my own commentary to the note was out of character and I realized why it was out of character. That kind of passive aggressive bullshit makes me feel like crap. Which explains why my modus operandi is much more confrontational. When my neighbor’s set up a BBQ under my window and filled my apartment with smoke, I went downstairs and talked with them. When I heard through the grapevine that one of my coworkers was bitching to a supervisor about something that I did, I went to that coworker and asked him to please come to me if he had an issue with something that I had done. I don’t beat around the bush. If I want something I ask for it. If something bothers me, I bring it up. If I’m mad at you, trust me, you will know it because I will have told you that I am mad and why. That’s just how I work.
So sneaking around in a locked stall to leave a passive aggressive response on a passive aggressive note left me feeling like crap. Especially when I realized that there was nothing that I could do about it, short of leaving a note of apology to an unnamed person. While this thought did occur to me, I decided that I didn’t want to make myself a target to whomever had left the original note. So I didn’t do it, and just continued to sit and feel like crap for the rest of the day.
Now flash forward a couple of days, and I’m sitting at a bar waiting for my order and the bartender who helped me was swamped. She was running around like a crazy person. She had run out of things but was too busy to do a restock and the food orders for the customers around the bar kept coming out wrong. So she was swamped and a bunch of people were pissed at her. My food finally came out, and it was wrong. She apologized profusely and said that they would get it fixed ASAP. I told her no big deal, but then as she’s walking away, the guy next to me made a snide remark about the service. This poor woman’s entire body stiffened at this, because he had said it loud enough for her to hear, and the next time that she came over to our side of the bar, she had this obvious look of dread. I tried to catch her attention to smile, let her know that it was fine, but she just kept her head down, until the guy next to me left.
Which happened to coincide with my food coming back out, and being correct this time around. She was obviously relieved by this, and I started to chat with her whenever she came over by me to make a drink. By the time I left, I’d gotten her to laugh at a joke and actually smile. I felt great. I could have so easily been the guy next to me. I had stopped to get a quick bite to eat, so having to wait 10 minutes for them to remake my food was not in my plans. But instead of getting upset and expressing my displeasure to this women, I chose to sit back, watch the baseball game on TV and not worry about a 10 minute delay. I chose to do good, so I felt good. Go figure. Consider that a lesson learned . . . or reiterated I guess.