| It depresses me how negative out society can sometimes be, and lack of common courtesy is one of the biggest culprits. I was always brought up to be polite, even to people who didn't deserve it - and especially to people who you didn't know well enough to form an opinion. The number of people who reject this approach and just act like everyone else is crap is sad. My experience of this was, following graduation from university, going to the job centre. I was looking for a mundane job for a year to earn some travelling money. My "advisor" treated me like an idiot, and a failure - constantly asking why I was "incapable of finding a graduate job". The idea that I didn't actually want a "career" quite then seemed beyond her. What a weird situation; I was a pretty smart guy, with a very strong engineering degree, being treated like an idiot by someone with very weak academic credentials. I didn't care what she was qualified in (she made a point of having the certificate on her wall, I think it was a foundation course in arts) so long as she was competent at her job; but ''by her own value system'' I was several steps above her on the ladder, even jobless. She made a point of being a jerk about my unusual choice, rather than simple getting over her disdain and helping me out! In the end I walked out on the principle of it. Being treated like crap is demoralising. That was an important life lesson, and ever since I've made extra effort to treat people as human beings. |