Chapter 3-Perceiving Others

 

One of the things that I hope to change about the way I communicate is my ability to give people a chance. Over the years, between influences from the people I interact with the most to visually experiencing situations where people have been rude to the people I care about, I have become a bit cynical and judgmental. In my line of work, I have experienced firsthand the ugliness that some people have withing them when they don’t get their way and the fact that my coworkers must experience that ugliness and can’t say anything about it is infuriating at times. For example, a lottery machine was not doing what a customer wanted so my supervisors went to check out the situation. They told the customer nothing was wrong, which was the truth, and began to speak amongst themselves in a different language. The customer then preceded to get angry and berate my supervisors, calling them derogatory names. Normally, I have a hard time deciphering what is situational and what is personal with how a person acts. This, in my opinion, was a decision influenced by internal attributes, when a person’s true nature comes out and changes the course of their life (ch. 3, pg. 66). To tell the truth, I am the type to blame a person’s actions on their internal attributes and sometimes, this is not always the reason behind a person acting the way they do. I hope to strengthen my recognition skills so misunderstandings in the future are less frequent.