Who Do You Like?

A few recent conversations at the office have gotten me to thinking about relationships with people—specifically coworkers and business colleagues.

I overhear people at the office talking about colleagues, expressing dislike for a person because of a perceived slight or instance of maltreatment. And I just don't get it.

I guess I get mad at people or hurt by people. But my sense of madness or hurt tends to go away quickly. I tend to give everyone (probably, everyone to the exclusion of myself) the benefit of the doubt. When I was serving as an interim manager of the word processing center in a large law firm in D.C., I tried to instill in the employees the motivation to put themselves in the other person's shoes. So this attorney or that paralegal said something to you that rubbed you the wrong way? Consider the possibility that she had a fight with her spouse just before walking out the door, or that the dog bit him, or that the car broke down on the way to work. A thousand possibilities, coupled with the belief that people are kind and good and don't intend to cause hurt feelings or problems, yield the power to let the hurt slide off one's back.

Now if you do or say something to hurt one of my children or grandchildren, well, that's a whole different story. I can go from sane adult to protective mama bear at the speed of heat. And remember it? I'll remember it for years! I remember another movie patron violently kicking Tyler's chair at a movie theatre in Rockville about 22 years ago—as if I were sitting there today. The chairs rocked, and the other patron didn't want Tyler to rock his chair. Okay, so I didn't actually say anything or come to his defense, but I think I had him switch chairs with me and I probably gave the woman a very dirty look, which I can do well.

But in the workplace? What's the point of deciding you don't like someone? You've got to work with that person day in and day out for the foreseeable future. Isn't it easier to decide that the perceived wrong was unintentional? Isn't it easier to think of all your coworkers as innately kind?

I always remember my daddy's words. He was a physician in private practice and then in a group practice that he founded. He practiced medicine in Orlando for 40 years until his death at age 70 in 1984. In those days, almost all nurses were women, and all his office staff were women. On the rare occasions when he talked about how things were going at the office, he would complain about how back-biting and petty the women in his employ were toward each other. I've never forgotten than, and I've always strived to be different than that, to not meet that stereotype.

Of course, I may be all alone in this outlook. As I Googled to find the quote about "Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes." I couldn't find it, but I did find "Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!"

Oh, well.