Which "you" are you, and when?

If you asked ten different people who know me to tell you about me, you're likely to get 10 at least slightly different answers.  The answers would vary depending on whether you spoke to someone who was just a co-worker, someone who was a co-worker but a bit of a friend, someone who was an acquaintance, or someone who knew me a bit better.  You'd also get different answers depending on whether it was someone who spent more time with me in person versus someone who I interacted more with over electronic means.  And you'd definitely get different answers if it was someone who knows me but who isn't necessarily friends with me.

We all show different sides of ourselves to different people, depending on the circumstances, the kind of relationship it is, how much we reveal of ourselves to any given person.  We might be quieter with some people, more boisterous with others, more reserved with some, more brash with others, depending on our comfort level and how we might closer match with the personality of the other person.  That doesn't mean you're showing a false version of you. It just means that different people bring out a different side of you.

In my case, while I think you'd get a range of answers, I don't think you'd find two people who would describe me using polar opposite words.  Well, at least I don't think so.  I guess you'd have to ask the people who really dislike me to answer that question, but I don't think that you'd get a Jekyll and Hyde description of me from two different people.

What made me think about this situation in particular is something that happened a few weeks ago.  I ended up reading an article about someone I know.  And the person described in the article was in fact not someone I know.  I've never seen that person to exhibit those qualities in my interactions with them.  While I didn't spend a ton of time with this person, I was around them more than just casually, and while I did note differences in their behaviour depending on who they interacted with, I was absolutely floored by the person as depicted in the story.  The person in the story was kind, caring, compassionate, fun, easy-going, and seemed genuinely a good person to be around.  While I'd seen a bit of that behaviour exhibited towards some people, I'd also seen the person be very negative, outright condescending, unabashedly rude, and sometimes, even vicious, and all of those things happened more than once, and more than to one person.  And that was all before any of that behaviour was turned on me.  It was actually because I started to notice that behaviour to others and started objecting to it that things changed, and eventually, their behaviour towards me turned into something I had to discretely manage.  At the time that the person depicted in the article existed for the person writing the story, this same person was also in the worst part of their treatment towards me.  In reading the article a few weeks ago and knowing the time period when that all was happening, and thinking about the behaviour that was directed towards me at the time, it was really hard to accept that it was the same person.

I suppose it shouldn't really come as a total surprise, since there are so many situations in the news when someone does something, and people they know are interviewed, and often, their response is that they would have never expected something like that, and they would never have expected that kind of behaviour from the person they knew.  This situation isn't nearly on that level - no crime was committed towards me. But it was hard to reconcile the person I was reading about in the article with the person who had decided to target me. And while not a physical threat, there was a level of threat that it was possible the person could have inflicted on my life, given the nature of our interaction, and at times, it was problematic trying to figure out how to best avoid the land mines while still needing to make it across the field.

I think I was particularly aware of the difference in the perception of someone's personality because it's come up in other situations. Someone who comes across really nice and friend to all, but you know things about them that not everyone does, and it dampens how you feel.  Or someone who might appear "odd" or difficult but you know something else about them so have more sympathy to overlook moments of them being less than gracious.

I was especially attune to these kinds of differences in many recent high-profile cases in many different arenas, where someone is accused of doing something terrible, and there are testimonials from others in their support saying that this person has never done that to them, implying that the person therefore could not have done it to their accusers. I've never understood that.  If the person has never done this particular bad thing to you or in your presence, it means only that.  You cannot extrapolate that to mean that they have not and cannot do it to someone else during the many hours in someone's life when you're not around. The example I usually use is that there are many people that high-profile serial killers met and interacted with and didn't kill.  That certainly doesn't mean that they didn't kill the numerous people that they are convicted of killing.

While I know that different people have different perceptions of me, a realization that I accept, it's still interesting to think about it in terms of other people, especially when confronted with reading about someone you know and seeing a completely different person.

things I don't understand - Am I invisible or do you just not want to wait your turn?

So I was in a food place today getting a sandwich. The person at the counter was making the sandwich for me, and she was the only employee that was visible, and there were no other customers waiting to be helped. She was almost half-way done with making my sandwich when another customer walked in. He walked around me, went up to the counter to about where she was on the other side of the glass, and he said he wanted to buy a soda, and he had his money out.

Ummm, ok, dude, she's IN THE MIDDLE OF MAKING MY SANDWICH. She's got plastic gloves on to make the sandwich, she's busy, there's no one else to help you, and I was already here when you walked in. OK, so you only want a soda, which mostly just involves her giving you a cup and taking your money since you'd be filling the cup yourself. I'm getting a sandwich that takes more time. But did you expect that she'd stop what she was doing for me, take her gloves off, take the money from you and ring you up and hand you a cup AND THEN go back to making my sandwich?

To her credit, she looked at him and said she'd be with him in a couple minutes. She finished making my sandwich, rang me up and took my money, and then when she was done with me, she asked him what size soda he wanted.

So, did he just think she was standing there doing nothing and somehow, I was just invisible to him, which is why he just went up to her and told her what he wanted, even though she was busy already helping another customer? Or did he think that since all he wanted was a soda, he would get to cut in front of me to get her to help him? I've seen people do that where they're interrupting to ask a question, which I still think is weird since it's not their turn yet, but to actually expect her to stop helping someone else to help him instead?

I don't get it.

things I don't understand - baseballs and bullet holes

The question had originally come up in my mind quite a number of years ago, but a recent reminder brought the issue to the forefront.

I was driving along and at a stop light, I noticed that the car in front of me had a baseball that had hit their back windshield, cracking it, and the ball was still stuck there. OK, it's not real - it's one of those fake ones. I'd seen those previously but hadn't really noticed them lately. At first glance, it's kind of amusing, I guess, but I'm not sure I understand going to the expense (even though they're not all that expensive) and trouble of making it look like my car had been severely damaged. Maybe I just don't have that kind of sense of humour? I'm figuring the actual situation happens on a regular basis, whether it's at a ballpark where a major league baseball player might actually hit a ball out of the park and into a parking lot, presuming there are still baseball stadiums designed that way. Or it could happen at a local park with a baseball diamond or even as a result of playing baseball on a neighborhood street. When the real situation arises, I would imagine it's not a particularly happy or funny event for the owner of the vehicle, so I guess I'm not sure why faking it is particularly amusing.

But even more puzzling to me is something I saw multiple years ago, when I was seeing more of these fake baseball-in-windshield deals. I was driving along and noticed that the car in the next lane had, not a fake baseball in the windshield, but FAKE BULLET HOLES ALL OVER THE CAR. It was on the side of the car, on the front and passenger doors and elsewhere in the "metal" of the car as well as the windows, and it was also on the back windshield and trunk. Seriously? Really. Ummm, ok, so what's the status symbol or joke or WHATEVER about pretending that your car has been riddled with bullets? That's supposed to be funny? Or cool? I'm supposed to look at that and think it's the best thing in the world? If anyone I knew actually drove up in a car like that, I'd probably stare at them as if they'd just sprouted three heads.

I don't get it.

things I don't understand - Do people not know how to give change anymore?

So in the last couple of years, I've come to the realization that some people in the restaurant industry don't know how to give change.

There have been a number of occasions when I've been in a restaurant, and I'll get the bill, and I'll give them some amount of money that requires change. And if they owe me $5 in change, they're bring me a $5 bill, not five $1 bills. Each time that has occurred, I've happened to have a couple dollar bills in my wallet, so I could still leave the tip I wanted.

Recently, I paid a bill, and I was supposed to get $10 in change back. And the waiter brought me a $10 bill in change. Really? Seriously. No $5 bill and five $1 bills? Now, ok, I know, maybe there wasn't enough change in the register. But then, shouldn't that be accounted for as well, where there's a way for them to get additional small bills? In this case, I was planning to leave $2 as tip. I had a couple $20 bills on me, a $5 bill, one $1 bill, and my newly acquired $10 bill. That's it. I wasn't going to leave $5 as tip, so I just left the dollar as tip. It's less than I wanted to leave, but since the waiter didn't really do all that much for me, it didn't really bother me to leave just $1. I mean, I could have asked for change, but really, that was stupid. Doesn't EVERYONE know, and shouldn't EVERYONE in food service like that know, not to give back a single $10 bill as change, precisely because chances are the patron isn't going to leave a large bill as tip if they have nothing else, and it's more likely that they'll leave less if they don't have the right bills in their possession?

Now, I don't know why I know about the whole change thing. I've only worked food service once in my life, and it wasn't really a tip thing, so I just gave change at the register. Maybe it's just something I've heard. Maybe I heard that all wait being staff was taught to give change that way. I guess that doesn't happen anymore.

things I don't understand - Do I need your phone number or not?

If I'm calling a friend who I know has my phone number and I have to leave a message, I won't leave my phone number in the message. If I'm not sure if they have my number, or if I'm giving them a different number to call me back at, I'll leave the number. And if I'm calling a business and leaving my phone number on an answering machine or voicemail, I'll leave my phone number. In each case, I'll include the area code, and I will pronounce each number, saying it slowly and clearly.

APPARENTLY, not everyone thinks this way. I can't tell you the number of times I've listened to voicemail messages where people have left a phone number, and they just ramble the phone number like it's some kind of contest to see how fast and jumbled they could possibly say it. They're not even saying the phone number with the same pacing as they've left the message. The message will be left in regular conversational tones, but when it comes to their phone number, they speed through it like they have someone chasing after them who's about to pounce so they really need to get off the phone. In almost all of these cases, I don't already have their phone number so I actually needed them to tell me. So, they either knew I didn't have the number, or they were just leaving the number in case I didn't have it. But in either case, they're still giving me the number for a reason, right, because they think I might need it? So why not say it at least clearly and slowly enough that if I actually *did* need it, I could actually understand them and being able to write the number down? How does mumbling it at a mile a minute help me to get that number?

There was this one time at work, and I am *not* exaggerating, where I had to play the message over and over again, because I could only make out one number at a time. Our phone system at work now has the ability to slow down messages, so there have been other occasions when I've replayed a message but slowed down so I could understand the phone number they were leaving me.

If you want me to call you back, why wouldn't you want me to be able to discern the phone number you're leaving me?

things I don't understand - prevalence of donut shops

There are a lot of things I don't understand.

In recent months, I've noticed that there are a ton of donut shops everywhere. And I don't mean places that sell donuts and other stuff too, whether it's grocery stores that sell donuts, convenience stores like 7-11 that sell donuts or places that sell donuts and Chinese food. (What is up with THAT anyway?) I mean donut shops where the main thing they sell is donuts. Sometimes, they sell other minor things too, like maybe bagels or muffins or something, but basically, the majority of their business is selling donuts.

Are there really that many people who eat that many donuts on a regular basis to keep all these donut shops in business? I mean, I like the occasional donut, but I generally know it's not very good for me, even less so than a bagel, and probably not even as good as other baked goods. I thought there was a whole health-conscious, fewer-carbs movement that started some time ago. The Atkins craze put an end to a lot of bread-based businesses. I used to love a store called Le Petite Boulangerie. When I was going to college at Cal, there was one about a block south of campus, and I loved being able to go in there and getting any manner of baguette or other fresh-baked goods. I think they might have gone away before the Atkins craze, but I was really sorry to see them go.

So with all the "eat more healthy" push going on, how are SO MANY donut shops able to stay in business? (Yeah, yeah, I've heard the jokes about the cops - I don't think that's an actual reason.)

I know there's a proliferation of coffee houses, but that at least makes more sense to me, since people addicted to caffeine drink a lot of it over the course of a day. And while drinking too much coffee has its own problems, I don't think it's as big an issue as consuming mass quantities of donuts.

Maybe this is something particular to Southern California, or at least the parts of Southern California that I happen to drive through on my way to work or other things that I do, and it's not the case of having a donut shop practically on every street corner in other places?

I don't understand why there are so many donut shops in business.