I've been wondering about something lately, and the more I think about it, the more it bothers me. When did everybody get so angry? I don't mean the kind of anger that comes from something truly terrible happening in your life, or the frustration we all experience when somebody treats us unfairly. I'm talking about the everyday anger that seems to be everywhere now, the kind that can turn a minor inconvenience into a shouting match, a simple disagreement into a personal attack, or an ordinary trip to the grocery store into an experience that leaves you wondering what in the world is wrong with people.
Maybe it's because I'm getting older, although I hate using that as an explanation for anything. I've spent most of my adult life dealing with the public in one way or another, first as a police officer, then for decades in the automobile business, and now for 25 years behind a radio microphone. I've encountered more than my share of angry people, and I can assure you that anger is nothing new. I've had people scream at me, threaten me, accuse me of things I didn't do and occasionally use language that would have embarrassed a sailor. I've also been on the other side of a few arguments myself, and I'm certainly not going to pretend that I've always handled every disagreement with the patience of a saint.
But something feels different today.
It seems as though people are walking around with a very short fuse, just waiting for somebody to give them a reason to light it. Somebody takes too long at a traffic light, and the driver behind them acts as though a personal insult has been committed. A restaurant gets an order wrong, and instead of politely asking for it to be corrected, somebody decides the entire dining room needs to hear about it. A flight gets delayed, and an airline employee who had absolutely nothing to do with the weather becomes the target of somebody's frustration. Even a simple difference of opinion can turn ugly in a matter of seconds, especially when the conversation takes place on social media.
I see it on the roads all the time, and frankly, that's where it concerns me the most. I've watched drivers become absolutely furious because somebody changed lanes in front of them, didn't accelerate quickly enough when a light turned green, or committed some other minor offense that probably cost them three seconds. Suddenly they're riding somebody's bumper, blowing the horn, making gestures that don't require any interpretation, or trying to get even by cutting the other driver off. I've spent enough time around law enforcement to know that confrontations can escalate in a hurry, and I can't imagine anything much more foolish than risking your life or somebody else's because a stranger didn't drive the way you thought they should.
I used to see a different version of that same behavior in car dealerships. A customer would arrive angry about something that had happened, and sometimes they had every reason to be upset. Maybe we'd made a mistake, failed to communicate properly or simply hadn't lived up to what the customer reasonably expected. I always wanted to know about those situations because if something was wrong, we needed to fix it. But occasionally someone would walk through the door already determined that the only acceptable outcome involved a confrontation, and it didn't matter how calmly we tried to discuss the problem.
One thing I learned over the years was that anger often has very little to do with the person standing in front of you. Somebody might be upset about a car repair, but the real pressure could be coming from financial problems, trouble at work, a sick family member or something else you knew absolutely nothing about. The person who gets the full force of that frustration may simply be the unfortunate individual who happens to be there when everything finally boils over. Understanding that doesn't excuse abusive behavior, but it can help explain why a seemingly small problem sometimes produces such an enormous reaction.
I learned something else during my years in business, and it took me longer than it should have. You don't have to match somebody's anger to resolve a disagreement. In fact, doing so usually makes everything worse. When somebody is already upset, raising your voice rarely convinces them you're right. It simply gives them permission to raise theirs a little higher, and before long, two grown adults are having a shouting contest that neither one is likely to win. Sometimes the most effective thing you can do is listen, let the other person finish, and then calmly explain what you can or cannot do to help.
That doesn't mean you have to agree with them, and it certainly doesn't mean allowing somebody to mistreat you or your employees. I never believed that being a customer gave someone the right to abuse the people working for me, and I still don't. There is a difference between making a legitimate complaint and treating another human being as though they are beneath you. You can insist on being treated fairly without humiliating somebody, and you can stand your ground without turning every disagreement into a battle.
I wonder how much social media has contributed to the problem. There was a time when somebody could say something foolish, a few people would hear it, and by the next morning everybody had moved on. Today, a person can have a bad moment, pull out a phone and broadcast it to thousands of strangers before they've even had time to reconsider what they're saying. Worse yet, there seems to be an audience waiting to encourage the confrontation, take sides and turn an ordinary disagreement into something much bigger than it ever needed to be.
And then there are the people who seem to spend their days looking for something to be offended by. I don't know how they find the time, because between preparing the radio show, writing this newsletter and reviewing new vehicles, I have trouble keeping up with things that actually require my attention. Yet there are people who apparently have enough spare time to argue with complete strangers about subjects that will have absolutely no effect on their lives. I sometimes wonder whether they'd be nearly as aggressive if they were sitting across a table from the person they're attacking instead of hiding behind a keyboard.
Of course, I don't want to make it sound as though the world has suddenly become a terrible place filled with terrible people. I still encounter kindness every day, and I believe the overwhelming majority of people are decent, hardworking folks who simply want to take care of their families and live their lives. I hear from wonderful listeners every week, meet people who go out of their way to help strangers and see countless examples of generosity that never make the news. The problem is that anger tends to be louder than kindness, and in today's world, the loudest people often get the most attention.
Maybe that's part of what has changed. We have more ways than ever to communicate, but I sometimes wonder whether we're getting worse at actually talking to one another. We can send a message halfway around the world in a second, yet we struggle to have a civil conversation with somebody standing three feet away. We can share our opinions with thousands of people instantly, but we don't always seem interested in listening to anyone who disagrees with us. Somewhere along the way, it feels as though we've started confusing being loud with being right.
I also think we've become a little too comfortable assuming the worst about other people. Somebody makes a mistake, and we immediately decide they must be incompetent. Somebody disagrees with us, and we assume they must be ignorant. Somebody inconveniences us, and we take it personally, even though the person responsible may not have given us a second thought. We rarely stop to consider that the other person might be having a difficult day, might have misunderstood something or might simply see the world differently than we do.
I've certainly been guilty of some of those things myself. Looking back over my dealership years, I can remember times when I got angry about something that seemed terribly important at the moment, only to realize later that it wasn't nearly as big a deal as I'd made it. I had high expectations, and I still believe there's nothing wrong with that, but I've learned that the way you handle a problem can sometimes have a much greater impact than the problem itself. People may eventually forget what the disagreement was about, but they'll remember how you made them feel while it was happening.
Here's something else I've come to appreciate as I've gotten older: You can be absolutely right about something and still be completely wrong in the way you treat another person. Being right doesn't give you permission to be cruel, and winning an argument doesn't necessarily mean you've accomplished anything worthwhile. Sometimes all you've done is damage a relationship, embarrass somebody or make an already unpleasant situation worse.
I don't have a magic solution for all the anger in the world, and I certainly don't expect everybody to suddenly become patient and understanding just because I wrote a few paragraphs about it. There will always be rude drivers, difficult customers, unreasonable people and situations that test our patience. There will also be legitimate reasons to get angry, and I wouldn't suggest that people should remain silent when they see dishonesty, injustice or somebody being mistreated. Anger can be useful when it motivates us to correct something that's genuinely wrong.
But I do think we could all benefit from being a little more selective about what deserves that kind of emotion. Not every inconvenience is an insult, not every mistake is intentional, and not every disagreement requires a winner and a loser. Sometimes the person who cuts you off in traffic is simply a bad driver, the restaurant server who forgot your order is overwhelmed, and the stranger who disagrees with you isn't necessarily a bad person.
The next time somebody does something that irritates me, I'm going to try to remember that I have a choice about how I respond. I can make the situation worse, or I can decide that whatever happened isn't worth ruining my day over. I won't always succeed, and anybody who knows me well can probably tell you that I still have a pretty good temper when something really gets under my skin, but at least I'm trying to get better at recognizing when it's worth using.
After all, most of us have enough real problems in our lives without turning every minor inconvenience into another one.
And if somebody disagrees with what I've written here, that's perfectly fine with me. You're entitled to your opinion, just as I'm entitled to mine, and we can probably both go on having a pretty good day without convincing the other person to change their mind.
Wouldn't it be nice if more people remembered that?
Straight Talk and Honest Answers — always.
-Jerry