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Ticked

Just because you're successful, that doesn't give you the rights to be condescending to other people.

So something happened at work today. A man came up to me, showed me the seat that was reserved for him by his wife (on a crusty candybar phone inside a ziplock bag) which said "level 1, row 6 from the entrance, seat 9" (or something like that). Now to contextualise, UCC's seats are labeled from A to Z and AA to GG, and there are a total of 6 entrances on the first floor facing different sides. He asked me where the seat is. Since I was a bit slow at comprehending this encrypted code, I told him that yes, this was the entrance that you can go in, and the seat should be inside, yes this was the first floor, and the insider might help him finding the seat he was looking for. Granted, I was a bit slow and confused by the message, but all he did was being very agitated (he wasn't even late) and kept on interrupting when I was trying to explain that the message was unclear due to the layout that the ushers were used to, and that he could try going in and getting help from the inside ushers (since I was outside, I was not supposed to go inside and show him the seats, although I could.) I noticed that the seat number is 9, which was nearer to another door, so I directed him there instead. In the process, he asked (agitatedly):

"Are you a student?"

"Which year are you from?"

"Which faculty are you in? Accountancy?"

I answered him politely with my service smile and even apologised for the confusion (that I'm not entirely sure, but it has become kind of a script whenever I work, to say thank you and sorry.) But I was so ticked off inside, Why do you want to know which course I come from? So you can rationalise why I was so stupid and couldn't guide you to a simple seat? Why must you be so rude and condescending? Just because your son/daughter/whoever is receiving an award at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine doesn't mean that you can be condescending to a service employee. Just because you're more successful (highly debatable given the phone situation) doesn't give you the rights to be mean to people who appear to be "beneath" you.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into this. Maybe he's just having a bad day. But seriously. I just can't even with this kind of people. But working in the service industry has allowed me to interact with all kinds of people, mostly nice ones, so whenever I'm nice so a mean person, I just hope that karma will reward me, or that I'm at least spreading some positivity to this increasingly-negative society.


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