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Unpleasant People

December 2, 2008 | 2 Comments

Post to the Host:
How do you react to unpleasant people?

Paul C.
Rochester, NY

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I meet so few of them that it always comes as a surprise. Drivers on the freeway can be dreadful, of course — tailgating, honking at you because you eased in front of them and cut them off, zooming around you in rage — but you steadily ignore them, of course, nothing else to be done. Once in a blue moon I encounter unpleasant drunks and there, again, you simply listen to them blather and make pleasant murmurs in reply and slip away as gracefully as possible. Then there is the occasional person who feels the need to tell you that he does not care for the radio show, or for my singing, and never could understand why others do, and this person (I think) has the right to make his statement and be respected for it. The unpleasantness that is a problem is that of one's friends — it must be dealt with, and sometimes the friendship is lost over it. And then there is one's own unpleasantness, which is truly painful. One simply suffers over it. I don't know how to avoid it. It simply crops up. The art of management — of directing people, of instructing them, of rejecting some of their ideas — is not easily learned. I think I am ever pleasant to strangers, but as to people I know well, staff, guests, friends, family — I don't know. Yikes.