The Benefit of the Doubt

I think people give me a lot of benefit of the doubt at work. I felt it strongly this morning. It turned out to be fine, but I (and other people) thought I made a pretty major mistake. This one guy in particular spent half an hour making phone calls to fix the problem I created. Then when we found out that it was nothing, he was really nice about it.

I felt kind of guilty, because I snapped at him a few days ago. That was one of those days that everybody’s purpose on this earth seems to be making life difficult for me. It had to be hormonal. Maybe I was ovulating (I know I get uncontrollably irritable when I’m ovulating, which makes no biological sense at all. Why would I get cranky when my body is prepping to get pregnated? That’s not a good way to attract a potential gene contributor!) I snapped at my customer over e-mail, I snapped at my co-workers, and I snapped at my boss. It got so bad that I even e-mailed Sarah and asked her to pray.

That one day actually wasn’t the only day that I was not as nice as I should be at work. I realized the way I perceive my co-workers is greatly influenced by the way my friend who used to work with me talked about them. She arrived there a year or so after I got hired there, and we became very good friends. We hung out outside of work a lot, and often talked about people at work. There was a lot of gossiping, and I must admit that it was fun. But it had a very negative effect on me. Until then I really didn’t dislike anybody at work, but after hearing negative things about people, I started being irritated by them, too. These negative characters we talked about were probably there from the beginning, but they just didn’t bother me before I verbally acknowledged them. I need to be more aware of the power of spoken words, in both positive and negative ways.

Anyway, I want to hold on tight on days like today, when people show me extra kindness and patience, so when they are having a bad day (like I did), I can pull out that love out of storage and bestow it upon them.