I've had a weird day. Twice in the last twenty-four hours, I've been shouted at for being rude in separate cases in which I truly believe I didn't do anything wrong.
It all started with the Dining Hall sushi. (Aside: Our Dining Hall is amazeballs. They brought in trays and trays of terrific sushi from a restaurant in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Students and teachers could have as much as they wanted, with the only slowing factor being that each time we got to the front of the line, we could have up to three pieces. I know, we're really lucky!) When I arrived at the serving station, where there was no line, I saw a stack of paper plates on the edge of the table. I took a plate and started to move towards the sushi. At that moment, the person serving shouted, "The line forms in the middle." I moved to the middle.
The next morning, within twenty-four hours, I went to the copy room to print a single page I had queued up earlier. When I walked into the room, there were copies shooting out of the machine, which wasn't logged on, and two people standing in the room, several feet away from the copier. I walked to the copier, fobbed in, and was ready to hit the "Print Release" button when one of the people standing in the copier's general vicinity snapped, "I was waiting for the copier." To be clear, the copier can queue up print jobs while shooting out pages; there's no logical reason for somebody who wants to use the copier to stand near the machine without setting it up for print release.
As I was walking the dog later, I thought about these two interactions and felt bad about them, about both what happened to me and how I reacted. I still believe that in both cases, I acted in rational ways -- picking up a plate that was at the edge of a table and logging into a copier that wasn't logged in for anybody else --but it's possible that I should have (1) asked what was going on rather than make assumptions based on the evidence and (2) not minded getting scolded for behaving in ways that bothered other people.
Honestly, in both cases I was rattled. In the case of the sushi, the upset didn't last long because, well, free sushi. I learned quickly where to stand in line and managed to eat a lot of very tasty dinner. In the second case, I just fobbed back out and went to a different copier.
All this to say, I'm trying to learn from my bad interactions. Here's the lesson I'm taking with me: When somebody does something that I find objectionable, I should ask a question rather than assume that the other person is being rude. If either person had said to me, "Do you know how this line works?", I might not have left feeling attacked.
Have people ever attacked you when you didn't feel that you were doing anything wrong? Write about it in the comments.