Rude People

I had a site upgrade Monday night due to a debit/credit failure.  Because of the nature of the failure, I didn’t shut the entire store down to do the upgrade.  During the upgrade, we had signs on the door saying debit and credit was down.  Some guy walked in and started off with a very rude attitude.  I don’t think he liked the company I work for, but he was shopping there anyways and being quite rude about it.  He was constantly rude, and was trying to start a fight.  I don’t know why.  He was very grumpy.  And he started asking me questions.  The kind of what do you do, why are you here questions.  At which point he found out I worked on networking equipment.  And suddenly his attitude changed.  He went from total jerk to “we’re best friends” mid-sentence.    It was suddenly a situation when he wanted to know if I did work on the side.  And my “polite” answer was I work too much and that I don’t have time to do side work. 

The correct answer would have been that I would never work for a person like him.  He was rude, belligerent, and a complete bum.  You can tell a lot about a persons’ character by seeing how they interact with others.  Being rude and inconsiderate to the people at the bottom is one of those things that drives me up the wall.  I dealt with people like that from time to time, and they were all complete and utterly worthless.  In the Marines, I dealt with people like that until I could get rid of them, or the project was done.  In the civilian world, I’d never go work for them.  If I ended up working for them, then I wouldn’t continue working for them. 

In the end, no matter how smart you are or how great your design, the people at the bottom of the chain are those selling your product and making you money.  There’s a place for them, and everyone is necessary in the chain.  Treating the people who pay you like crud is unacceptable.

In the end, I was polite as the last thing I wanted to do was go off on some idiot in my work uniform.  There’s no point in starting a public relations fiasco over an idiot.  And just generally rude is the kind of people we deal with on a daily basis.  “Putting them in their place” sounds like a great idea, but in the end shouldn’t we treat others as we want to be treated?  Even if it means being nice to rude people.  Of course, I’d also have to add the second part…  never mistake my kindness for weakness.