Only one downer occurred on the whole trip--a man who made my son cry. At a tourist site Jere in his innocence did something he should not have. This caused the site Gestapo to descend upon him and throttle my son with words. He didn’t stop until he saw tears in my son’s eyes.
I was mad. I had already reprimanded Jere for what he had done and I felt the man at the tourist site should have discussed the matter with me, not chastise a ten year old.
Walking back to the van, I stewed about the incident and the more I stewed the firmer ( not softer as you might expect with stewing,) became my resolve to address the issue somehow. Aha! I have a blog! I will tell everyone I know about the place that we visited and about the mean employee who accosted my child. I will tell them how ridiculous the man’s argument was and how he just wouldn’t stop. That’s it! I’ll get even! The power of a blog! Yeah!
Luckily for me, I have a very wise friend I’ll call LJ. She has helped me through many a crisis. In the past, when I have complained about people who hurt me and asked what I should do to get even, LJ would wisely respond, “Sure you could go around acting like she did just to show her what it’s like to be treated that way. But do you want that in your character?”
The more I thought about blogging and exposing that gentleman and the tourist site, the more I heard LJ’s voice ringing in my ears from long ago, “But do you want that in your character?”
No, I don’t want revenge or retaliation in my character. I want forgiveness and love in my character. I want seeing the eternal picture to be part of my nature. I will never know if that man later felt badly about making Jere cry, and went home and prayed for forgiveness. Later that day, was he extra friendly to customers to make up for it? Does he have a blog somewhere and has publicly confessed? I don’t know.
What I do know, is this.
Anger makes you smaller,
while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.
while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.
Cherie Carter-Scott,
that's really too bad, and I think you decided on the right approach.
ReplyDeleteOn a another note, I haven't had a chance, but I had the most wonderful customer service experience and I will write about it, but I'm not sure I need to name the specific location. I could just name the overall brand and say, good stuff.. right? Except I know sometimes, it's about location. I dunno.
Haven't written it yet, will decide later, I suppose.
Daisy
Daisy: I would love to hear about your customer service experience. I'm always fascinated by companies who go out of their way to treat their customers well.
ReplyDeleteI have written about good customer service in the past, and then emailed the headquarters a link to my site so they can read it. If you give a location then sometimes the headquarters will reward the actual employee himself/herself, which is a good thing.
The thing to watch for though, is whether or not the employee who helped you broke company policy in order to do so. Like if they have a company policy that an employee should never walk a customer to their car, and your post talks all about how great it was that the employee helped you to you car with all your purchases, then he might get in trouble if you give an exact location.
I'll keep watching for that post!
Oooh,new comment page. Looks like one I've had Internet Explorer success with in the past. Fingers crossed...
ReplyDeleteI'm so proud of you! You're lucky you had your friend keep you in integrity with yourself. I got myself fired from my column last year for writing an email that should have gone into the email waiting to be sent box and then run by my husband before I pressed send.
Jere's lucky to have you as his mum because I'm sure you've chatted with him , too, about why forgiveness is better than carrying around anger. I hope you let him read your Seattle guest post. Not every boy has a mum as positive as you!
My computer hasn't crashed!!!!
ReplyDeleteJanice: Yes, I am convinced that the reason God gives us friends is so that we learn how to be decent people. I am continually grateful for the wisdom of my friends.
ReplyDeleteOuch! Too bad there isn't an email "recall" button, where once we've pressed "send" we could take it back.I've sent a few myself that I wish I could recall.
Thanks for the reminder, Janice.I will tell my son about my decision because he was there when I was ranting, "I have a blog!"
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ReplyDelete