Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Or carelessness. Or overwork. Or simple mental fatigue. Or distract…ooh! squirrel!

Via Facebook (where I sadly get too much information that is interesting in my life), I ran across this Cracked.com article, “5 Ways You’re Accidentally Making Everyone Hate You.”

Uh-oh.

This hits me on two levels: one, I am guilty of four of these more than occasionally, and two on a semi-regular basis (perhaps oddly, Number One seems to be the one I am least likely to step into) and b) I have reacted to other people who have committed these inadvertent slights as though they were intentional.  As if things were all about me, which they almost always are not.  I find myself faced with what one might call a delicate situation.

A) is easy to deal with, or at least straightforward.  Stop doing these things.  Be more careful what say and more conscientious about how you interact with people.  Answer your damn email promptly.*  Express gratitude better; don’t assume people know how much you value them. Apologize to people whom you have inadvertently slighted. There are some overdue emails involved in this scenario.

B), though… Going forward, it’s not a problem.  Give people the benefit of the doubt. Assume that they do not intend to be mean, dismissive, or rude, unless they clearly do.  Narrow your parameters for what defines those terms.

Looking backward, however, presents me with a dilemma.  I don’t know how to approach people I have treated less than kindly because of how I perceived their behavior and say “I’m sorry I thought you were being a jerk, I realize now you didn’t mean it” without sounding condescending and obnoxious.  And there are several people whom I value from whom I have distanced myself for precisely these reasons, and whom I now believe to have been innocent of any wrongdoing.  As I have said before (and without going into details) last year was pretty terrible for me, and I had a tendency to overreact.

I will need to find the appropriate way to grovel without sounding like I am, you know, groveling.  Then I have some different emails to write.**

*And blog comments.  Definitely need to do better with replying to blog comments.

**If you think you are one of these people, drop me a line? Especially if you do not want me to grovel. It will save time.