Mean People Suck

Have you seen the bumper sticker that says “Mean People Suck”?  Well they do.  Big time.  And I hate that I have to be nice to them when I am calling on behalf of someone else.  The other day I called a woman who answered the phone using her title.  I didn’t know that the person on the list was the person who answered the phone – like really how would I?  Anyway, she got all offended because I called her by her first name and not Dr. so and so.  I mean really.  Get off your high horse.  Just because you probably had much more schooling than I did and probably make a ton of money more than me, get over yourself.

Why can’t people be nicer?  It doesn’t take that much of an effort to be pleasant does it? But I suppose it does.  But being uppity and snooty does not ingratiate you to anyone.  It just makes people talk about you behind your back and laugh about you.  Everyone who has ever dealt with people on the phone as part of a job has stories about people who were mean, demanding, exasperating, and ugly.  It does not get you anywhere in life.  I want to ask these people if they have ever heard of the saying that you catch more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar, but that would not be very polite of me to stoop to their level, and it would not be good for my employer.  So I just have to deal with it. 

I suppose I have to take my own words back to some extent because I have been known to be not so nice to some of the people who are calling my home for various reasons.  Most of the time I just don’t answer the phone, which solves it.  Then again after an experience like yesterday, it reminds me that when I talk to random people calling that they are only doing their job and I need to be nicer because it could be me on the other end.