When I was growing up it didn’t matter what disputes we had, people were just willing to put things right and that spilled over into our personal lives. Attitudes were different back then.
The Customer is always right phrase
The phrase, ‘the customer is always right’ that was originally coined in 1909 by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s Department store in London, became part of our every day language.
Wanting to help others
But even if things couldn’t be put right, people were kind and conciliatory, they wanted to help others. Life certainly felt better. We have to want to be helpful and conciliatory.
It's now having to prove ourselves
For those on the receiving end where we have to fight to be heard, it’s much more difficult. But now it’s a case of being wrong and having to prove we’re right. We must all must work towards the same goal.
Valuing others' opinions
We should learn to value each other and others' opinions, we should want to help and be better people, to work together for the greater good. But instead we acquire things and acquiring things has changed how we deal with each other.
Through hardships, we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture, have become less patient and more resentful. It’s the attitudes that lets us down.
Yes, things have changed quite a bit as far as people's behavior towards each other. People are acting more like Ferengi's and only concerned about what they can get out of life, without worrying very much about how our actions affect others.
I grew up in an environment where we were expected to think that way, but it wasn't ever really in my nature. I was a very sensitive child and always wanted to help people, but the people I was expected to help really didn't appreciate it at all, so I became very resentful.
All I learned was that life definitely isn't always fair. There are always those people who seem to be blessed and have everything pretty much handed to them, while I had to struggle to get any little thing.
I have spent most of my life trying to be the good boy and nice guy, which hasn't really gotten me very far in life. Nobody ever really seemed to listen to me anyway, so eventually I gave up trying, particularly it felt like I was standing in the middle of the room screaming, but nobody ever noticed.
I have watched so many people around me end up having everything that I could have ever wanted, only to just throw it all away without a seconds thought, so I have been so very resentful.
It just never seemed like it was in the cards for me to ever be happy. People seem to somehow have this sense of entitlement, where life is always supposed to be easy and they have everything provided for them, which just isn't very realistic.
It would just be nice to be able to help people and have them appreciate, rather than always expect.
Thanks Randy. Yes, people do expect more than they appreciate.
Society seems to do things differently. If more people were appreciative, I am sure more of us would go out of our way to help.
'The customer is always right' is something I grew up with, but seems to be something of the past. It starts at home, but sadly, it seems to have been assigned to the history books.
I agree with you though, 'it would be nice to be able to help people and have them appreciate, rather than always expect.'
Being helpful certainly doesn't feature much in our every day lives these days, in fact I think the saying is now 'the customer is always wrong.' But there is now reason why we can't be more helpful to one another.
It's surprising how good helping someone else out makes you feel and you're helping someone who needs it.
I've heard the same thing too, but if we learned to change our attitudes around and that's all it would take, we would all deal with each other differently.
It worked once what's stopping it from working again? It stands to reason that when we change the attitude, the person behind the attitude changes.