Mean People Suck!

February is that time of year where we have the opportunity to show people how much we love them.  It is called Valentine's Day and I think it is a wonderful thing.  Now yes, it has grown into a big huge commercialization of cards and flowers and candy, but the reason behind it is good and honorable and important.  Showing your appreciation and love for another human being.

But what about the rest of the year?  And what about the rest of the people in this world?  The ones you know and the ones you don't.  Lately I've been really observing and taking in the personal dynamics of human interaction and quite honestly, it troubles me.  There is a certain element of people that are just downright mean.  And for what purpose?

I know there are many things that form and create a person and their personality.  I'm well aware that a lot of it is due to experiences they've had or things that are going on in their life and what have you.  But be that as it may, our behavior is still ours to own.

Recently I was in a situation where I needed to speak up about someone who was being consistently mean at work.  This is not the first time I've said something, this has been going on for two years now.  However, in this particular instance the behavior needed to be addressed and I did so.

The response coming back to me was that this person "does not intend" to be mean.  This person "does not intend" to cause problems.  This person "does not intend" to upset people.  Therefore this person does not feel the need to take responsibility for what she is doing because she did not intend to cause harm.  The actual behavior itself was not addressed.  But rather what other people need to do because "this was not her intent".

First, I call B.S. because this person knows exactly what she is doing and does it on purpose.  But let's suppose she was truly genuine and "did not intend" to be mean to people.  The reality is -

Your intentions have no bearing on the impact of your actions.

We've all heard the saying The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions and its true.  Here's the thing.  You may have a really nice road going there, but it still leads us all to Hell.

A drunk person does not get behind the wheel intending to cause a fatal accident, however, intended or not, someone still died.

Last week one of my neighbors was involved in a road rage incident with a teen age driver.  I'm sure the young man never intended to do harm when he got into his car that night with all of his friends, but he still ran a woman off the road and scared her unnecessarily.  

And if you follow my facebook page at all you are probably aware of an incident I was witness to at a local Burger King restaurant.  A display of meanness on a level I was completely unprepared for. 

We need to take personal responsibility for our behavior whether our intentions are good or if they are not.  But more importantly, we need to be kind to one another, whether we want to or not.  Our actions have consequences.  They always do.  I want my actions to render good consequences.

I wish everyone did.

UPDATE:  In case you haven't read my facebook post about the Burger King incident I just want you all to know that Burger King took action and I feel really good about the steps they took to address it.  Hopefully the employees involved have learned a valuable lesson and now know the proper way to treat others with respect regardless of what one assumes about them.  

For those who don't  read facebook, the incident I'm referring to was a case of 3 employees laughing and discussing the ways to beat up and throw out a paying customer, because to them, he appeared to be homeless and had been in the restaurant longer than they felt was necessary.  I personally, did not make that correlation at all and we had been in the restaurant about the same amount of time.  It was a horrible experience and I reported it to Burger King's corporate office.