On Relating With Subordinates

You know, a situation the other day reminded me to post my thoughts about what or how we relate to those that are under us.

I may be referring this to in our household or in the workplace, but would also be applicable in situations with those people who are "in our mercy" -- an aptly-termed phrase, by the way. I know situations are now blooming in your mind, like how an employer treats his/her employees or a mother henning in her children or a captain reining in with his shipmates. But how a customer relates with the waiter or how a company representative is treated by his/her client are also two from this type of a situation where there is one in the upper pedestal with others below him/her relatively helpless with whatever actions he/she can do.

Ok, I'm not the expert for these ideas, so better spare me the questions whether this is right or wrong, or those that start with "what is" or "how about". I would just like to post my thoughts on what I read last year from a Yahoo link which I cannot recall at the moment.

Ok, I'm starting to lengthen my post here so let me get to the point. From that link, I recall that the true test of one's character is on how one would treat his/her subordinates. From a common-sense perspective, if we approach those that are superior to use we tend to show our best faces. But to those who are under us, tendency is we don't care about this. In fact, we began to drop down our beatifying front and show the real us.

Let me just present these questions for us (myself including) to ponder on.
Suppose in a fancy restaurant with all the waiters greeting after their customers, consider yourself the waiter. When the customer tend to irritate you, maybe by shouting at us or made their orders confusing, do you shout back or be rude to them?

Of course we should not, this should not even be a question. It is an innate imperative in our common sense to be kind, presentable and gentle with our customers. They are the indirect sources of our salary, so this is the motivation at the back of our heads when dealing with them. Note that there is this minimal and suppressed degree of our innate selfish selves to that kind of motivation.

Now, time to reverse the roles. Let us now be the customer from the same scenario. Suppose the waiter did not deliver your order right, perhaps forgot that gravy you explicitly specified should be there, do you shout at him or be demeaning to the poor guy?

Think for yourselves what typically would be our first reaction. First, you are not obliged to be gentle or nice because you simply are not obliged. This was our first thought before anything else, like ethics or morality, would start to factor in, isn't it? So if you are not obligated to be gentle or nice to the lowly waiter, do you have to be?

The response to the latter question will show how strong or, sad to say, how weak your character is.

Then again of course, all of us here are big boys or girls now who understood what should be the proper attitude towards the not-so-fictional waiter. But seeing that this is prevalent, we tend to forgot this particular what-should-be. Or we tend to ignore, sadly. As just an example, I'm not just only referring to the waiter.

And in my case as of the other day, I was the figurative "waiter" from a similar situation. That is why I want to post this blog to air what I had thought about this.