A friend shared this on Facebook:
(Note: The original sharer on Facebook does not seem to be the creator. If anyone knows who created this, PLEASE let me know. I’d like it as a print.)
It reminded me of something that happened at work the other week which I meant to blog about but never got around to.
We have a cafeteria at work where we eat lunch. I try to bring a packed lunch (most often leftovers from dinner), but that’s beside the point here.
Once we’ve done eating we’re supposed to clear off the tables ourselves, keeping costs down. So we all take our tray and its contents over to the clearing station, where we sort it into rubbish, cutlery, plates, glasses, mugs and trays.
On the day in question I walked there with a few colleagues, as usual, and was clearing away my stuff when the person behind me, a man in his -uhm, guessing here – fifties(?), a man I’ve been used to thinking of as a pretty sensible sort of guy, comments “Oh, I threw the cutlery in the trash by mistake”. This happens, of course. I answer “These things happen, if you just let them know they’ll pick it out again”, finish clearing and start walking towards the door. When I reach it, I realise he’s just behind me, having finished too and walked off without alerting the two members of staff working right behind the clearing station to the fact that there is now a perfectly good fork and ditto knife in the trash.
Why? What possible reason could he have for not saying “Excuse me, I’m afraid I dropped some cutlery in the trash bin”. Is he afraid of losing face? Then why did he comment out loud to start with? Because if he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have noticed. And I can tell you: He lost face with me.
If it ever happens again I’ll demonstratively go back and tell them myself.