Recently, there was quite a controversy because in some high profile tennis match one of the players was handing his hat as gift to a young boy in the audience when, suddenly, some middle-aged man just snatched it and took it for himself. What was particularly egregious is that this man is a multi-millionaire CEO of some Polish company.
This was quite literally a "stealing candy from a baby" moment. Or, in this particular case, a grown-ass super-rich man stealing a hat from a young boy, because of greed and nothing else.
The tennis player was rather obviously outraged about this and later sought out the boy and gave him another identical hat. Unsurprisingly, the wider public was also outraged at the CEO's action, which was incredibly petty and heartless. Stealing the hat in that situation from any person would have been inappropriate (and perhaps even outright criminal), but doing it to a child is a hundred times worse. The fact that he is a multi-millionaire CEO of a company only adds insult to injury.
This reminded me of a something that happened to me some time back. Not even nearly as bad as that, but still showing how greedy some people can be, even when they have absolutely no reason to be.
My manager in the company I work for organized a small birthday event to celebrate my birthday. Nothing big, just a few people there, and some little things to eat and drink, including some pastries.
At some point some random employee of the company, who had not participated in the small event at all, came and asked if everybody was done with the pastries, and quickly grabbed all of the remaining ones in a box and quickly walked away.
It happened so fast and I was so surprised by that action that I didn't have any time to think and react. I'm not used to this kind of thing happening. I know it's a running joke that someone might come up with a clever comeback to someone's behavior only afterwards, but anyway, if I could go back in time I would seriously say to him: "I think you should ask for a salary raise so that you can afford your own pastries so you don't need to hog them from other people." Yes, I would have literally say that out loud to him, if I had been more prepared and the act didn't catch me so much as surprise.
This is not some kind of low-level job company, and employees get very decent salaries. That guy most definitely could afford buying himself a hundred such pastries at once if he wanted. But no, he just had to hog all of them from someone else's small-scale birthday celebration. I'm not so much upset about the pastries as I am of the fact that I was too slow-witted to come up with that response on the spot, as it happened so quickly and caught me completely by surprise.
Why do some people do this? If that guy was so craving of pastries he could have literally gone and bought himself some. But no, he just had to snatch them from someone else. Why?
I'm not even tooting my own horn if I say that the thought wouldn't even occur to me, to do such a thing at someone else's party. It's just so petty and so unnecessary.
Comments
Post a Comment