People who get pissed (6/25/07)

So I've given myself a couple days to relax about this so it doesn't turn into one big bitchfest...

Friday at work, I did NOTHING but try to defend myself and my company from irate real estate agents throughout the US and Canada. Reader's Digest version, our broker sent out an audio-blast to every single realtor in our corporation (about 35,000 people) to market his own products, none of which are offered by or affiliated with our brokerage...and this whole thing was down without the permission of management and completely without our knowledge. To make matters even more fun, when he programmed the auto-dialer, he programmed it with our office number (even though he sent it from his home) and he programmed it to begin making calls at 9:00PM instead of 9:00AM. Hence, people on the East Coast began receiving calls at 11:00pm and people as far as Nova Scotia started receiving them at midnight. I say STARTED because 35,000 phone numbers...well, it takes a while to call all of them, so some people were receiving calls at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00am. Needless to say, this pissed off most of them...and understandably so. Many called back immediately and left nasty messages (which, I admit, were amusing to listen to), but most waited until business hours, at which time they called back our office to bitch, threaten to sue, and basically blame it all on me personally because I was the one answering the phone. I know I took at least 500 calls.SO...here's my question...what good does it do to call and cuss out someone who you know damn well didn't have anything to do with it? A lot of them calmed down as soon as the situation was explained to them...but for quite a few of them, such an explanation only fueled their anger (why, I don't know...because typically I am damn good at de-escalating situations like this and I was sincerely apologetic despite the fact that I was a victim of this man's carelessness as well).

I realize that it is incredibly unnerving and scary to receive a phone call at that time of the night...your initial reaction is "OH NO WHO DIED???" Especially for those people who have sons and daughters in Iraq (many of whom called me). But once you learn that your family and kin are fine and it was honestly a careless mistake...while it is annoying and stupid...SHOULDN'T YOU BE GRATEFUL THAT'S ALL IT WAS INSTEAD OF SOMETHING REALLY AWFUL??? What good does it do to call and make a complete ass of yourself by screaming at someone who had absolutely nothing to do with it? You may as well save your cell phone minutes, people.

So I have concluded that there are far too many people in the world who are looking for something to be mad about. Or maybe they just hate their lives and themselves and when an opportunity presents itself to take it out on someone, they jump at the chance. I don't know. But I think it's really, really sad. There are so many awesome things to do and be happy about...it baffles me that people expend so much energy trying to make others just as miserable as they are. Get a hobby. Go out and do something nice for someone. Plant a tree. I don't care, just do something productive already!

I'd be a hypocrite if this was my life philosophy 100% of the time. And maybe it's why it bugs me so much...maybe it's because this is something that I personally need to work on. But I can tell you that this experience will certainly help me work on it a lot harder.