[alexholehouse]

An acquaintance recently made a facebook update describing how they belittled and berated a coffee shop employee for making a (fairly bad, to be fair) mistake regarding change on a $20.

I seriously considered leaving my office and going to the coffee shop to apologize for this person's behavior, and I personally am finished with this individual in both a social and professional context. There is pretty much nothing I find more offensive than rudeness when people make a mistake.

[joonix]

What it comes down to is empathy. Empathetic people are able to put themselves in the shoes of others and understand their circumstances and use logic to rationalize their own emotions. In the long run, this type of person is better to work with. That's why they say look at how someone treats a waiter. An empathetic person understands the waiter made a mistake because they are overloaded with tables or their mind is frazzled because they're working their second job of the day with a sick kid at home. The person who lacks empathy will only suspect pure incompetence or malice as the cause and have an outburst or berate the terrible service.

[kogus]

An important aspect here is the fact that the coffee shop employee is powerless in this situation - they could lose their job if they reply with equal rudeness. How we interact with those who have less power in a situation is very revealing of our character. I can't stand it when a person is only polite to people who have some kind of leverage over them.