The last days of summer work, part 1

On my second-to-last day of working at the lake, I had a complaint made against me.

Last Friday, I was sitting at the front counter taking notes on my International Relations textbook.  Next to me was the gatehouse lady on duty at the time.  We'll call her J.  J is an older woman who used to be wonderfully sweet but has become lonely and bitter.  We still get along quite well normally, but on this particular day something just went wrong.

A family came up to the front desk asking if they were allowed to do something.  I knew from recent conversations with our manager that they could.  J, however, didn't think they could, and smugly turned them away.  As they walked back to their spot on the beach, I turned to J and said, "Actually, I'm pretty sure they can.  I talked to [the manager] earlier this week, and he said it was okay."

J brushed me off, but the family overheard me and came back, demanding an explanation.  J looked at me and asked me stiffly to explain.  I did so, and she was forced to allow them to do as they had requested.  Now, I felt bad for contradicting her, and I certainly hadn't meant to be overheard, so I apologized to her.

Half an hour later, while I was on stand, the manager came up to me and told me that there had been a complaint against me.  He said that J had called our boss, who had called the manager, who had come out to talk to me about it.  Apparently J had been very upset that I'd been so rude as to tell her what the rules were. The manager wasn't angry about it, thankfully, but just asked me not to sit at the front desk when J was there. Okay, I can do that.  After I got off stand, I wrote her an abject note of apology (because she wouldn't be working again until I was gone for school) and left it for her.  But I continued to stew.

I knew that I hadn't handled things the most delicate way possible, even though being overheard was not in my plans.  I shouldn't have said anything to her.  But still, the fact that she had rebuffed my correction so angrily seemed wrong to me.  I thought about it all day, and in the end I came to a few general conclusions about situations like these.  (Please note that these are not meant to be judgments of J or what she did; she was perfectly reasonable to be angry about my contradiction, even if she may have overreacted a bit) First, being offended is a matter of pride and humility, not of being wronged.  I will always have the option to be hurt by what people do, or to move on and get over it.  I choose to move on.  Second, I decided that I never want to be the kind of person who refuses to take a correction.  I want to be flexible and open-minded, and humble enough to recognize the worth of what other people say.

This is not going to be a short or an easy battle, but I think it's worth it.  I want to shape my character to be the kind of person I can respect, and I deeply respect people who can control their emotional responses to hurtful things and those who are always willing to learn.

Wish me luck!

<3
Eliza