Dear Readers,
I once worked with a young man by the name of Edric. For the sake of professionalism and personal feelings, and because Edric is a rather spicy name, I call him Edric, but his name was as you may have guessed not in fact Edric. I will not say in which of my past jobs I worked with him, and there have been enough that you probably cannot guess; so there.
Onto the story:
Edric was by any normal consideration a superb human being. He had many friends, a magnetic personality, was good at what he did, and was fundamentally very kind. In short he had all of the tools to be successful and happy in this here American society. (No readers, don't worry, Edric is not me, but so flattering of you to make the error ^^.)
However, like Smaug hoarding altogether too much gold and upsetting one too many lake dwelling persons, thus inevitably attracting a ragtag but charismatic band of a wizard, a little person, and a bunch of uppity dwarves, or Oedipus not paying quite enough attention to prophets and subsequently ending up in what we might call a rather awkward family situation, Edric had but one tragic flaw.
Edric was condescending. He did not condescend over talent, or looks, or anything like that, but rather personal ethics. Although Edric was of a very ethical sort, taking care of his friends, paying his debts, doing what he was paid for, never stealing and so forth, he had little respect for those who didn't adhere to these principals. This fact happens to be true of a lot of good-natured ethical people, but Edric took his one major weakness a step further and made his opinion public. Regularly.
He didn't do this by wheeling off all willy-nilly-Don-Quixote-after-a-windmill style. Edric was quiet in his expressed disdain. If a co-worker sat on Farmville all day, letting the responsibility for his work vanish into the bureaucratic morass of his employer, Edric would snort and scoff quietly to himself, ask his fellow pointed questions that indicated the other's ineptitude, and suggest when the slacker was in earshot that Edric himself had enjoyed his productivity for the morning and couldn't understand how the firm was behind on goals.
Now you may be thinking Edric's fault to be not such a fault at all. What harm is there picking on a scallywag or two, especially when said picking might be deserved? Well the problem for Edric was that he was in general such a good guy, and worked at such a dilapidated company that in some way or another, almost everyone with whom he worked fell up short of the Edric bar. That is not to say that this bar was particular high, in fact a nice, normal, fully civilized adult would usually be fine in the eyes of Edric, but for whatever reason he DID work in a place where people failed his test.
There is something about human nature that Edric didn't understand reader. In our hearts what we all want is not that complicated. We want to respect ourselves, and we want our friends and acquaintances to respect us. This means very different things to different people, but few men and women who meet this standard are not quite satisfied with their state of being.
Prior to Edric, many of his work averse colleagues were likely in a state where they had some measure of self respect, and some measure of respect from their peers. When Edric saw their Farmville playing, their assignment redirection, their petty mean acts against others for no greater reasons than questing for attention or boredom, he let them know. It didn't matter that the way he let them know was quiet, or that only he, they, and very observant bystanders would notice the exchange. Edric was letting them know that they shouldn't respect themselves for what they were doing, and that at least one person and probably others did not respect them for what they were doing.
Because Edric's disdain was unfortunately only targeted at the least mature elements of society, their reactions were unfortunately among the least predictable and most negative that could be expected. They freaking hated Edric. He was a threat to peaceful well being, a snake in the Eden of sloth, a Samuel L. Jackson telling you that he was in fact tired of these Mother Fucking Snakes on this Mother Fucking plane, if Snakes were lazy, mean office workers and planes were offices.
How did they react? They whispered, snorted, and quietly made their positions known in return. Some, amongst themselves would say things like:
"That Edric sure has a way of putting his nose where it doesn't belong doesn't he?"
(Translation, oh crap he's onto me! You don't work either do you? What should we do?!!)
"Oh Edric, at it again..."
(Translation, I'm going to pretend that Edric is doing something vague, yet seriously wrong to mask admitting my weakness, but we know the score. Time to go to work boys.)
Others would act independently, putting Edric in difficult situations by giving him extra work, submitting damaging rumors about him, implying that he was incompetent to his face, and generally doing the things that modern employees can do to reciprocate offense against a perceived threat without exposing their soft, soft asses, sweet, sweet deals, and fatty, fatty gravy trains.
At first Edric took no notice, or chose not to notice, but slowly, he began to be affected. Edric still respected himself, but the closest thing he was getting to respect from his colleagues was fear. The human mind is a strange thing in that it begins to believe what it hears enough times, and so little by little Edric's self confidence too, as well as the legitimate respect of many elements in his place of employment, began to fade.
This changed Edric's often cheery and energetic demeanor to a bellicose and often bitter one, and was a dark specter over his heart.
Edric began blaming his co-workers increasingly for their actions. He saw a world turned against him, and grew furious that things could be so unjust. Where once his gestures of contempt were quiet, difficult to decipher, they began to be sloppy, overt, even aggressive at times. This only served to further goad the work weary workers around him, and they returned fire.
At this point you can likely see the vicious cycle that took place in Edric's life. I will leave it up to you to decide whether or not everything ended well, and if Edric found a way out of the mess. Now comes the important part. Why were Edric's actions misguided, and why despite perhaps being right, should we never do what Edric did unless ready to face the consequences?
People hold their self image too dear to take assaults against it lightly. The same is doubly true for ongoing attacks. No matter how toady, no matter how repulsive, no matter how awful a certain person's way of dealing with others and himself might be, pointing this out to him is obviously going to have repercussions. Edric was in a position where he truly thought he might make the world a better place by facing off against wrongdoers, and where he felt fully justified in his actions. When they retaliated, all he saw were the same negative traits manifesting higher, and felt outraged that he, of all people, would have to be the victim of this kind of assault.
Edric was not prepared to face the consequences though. He liked his job, he liked the respect that others showered on him for his good work, and he had not realized that this was the mana on which he lived. When it was taken, he wilted and was sad.
What does this mean for us? In the situations where we are surrounded by half efforts and poor morality, we often have to choose between struggling against this, and our peace of mind. In Edric's case the "evil" he saw was not really harming the world in any powerful way, nor was it something Edric had any hope of changing, but he still flung himself headlong at it like a fool, and was surprised when things went poorly for him.
The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, so if you're going to stick up you'd better like hammers. If not, I suggest being pragmatic and withholding criticism from all improper channels.
That is all readers, you may disagree but hopefully Edric's story has helped you to consider the issue,
Tim
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