Selfish People

See me, I get great pleasure in doing things and even going the extra mile to make people happy and comfortable, especially when I’m not obligated to do so. It just makes me feel good! But I have seen and it’s finally sinking in that it’s the nature of people to just be selfish and unappreciative and they will find something unsatisfactory with your efforts and harp on that regardless of whatever else you’ve done that is great. That mess cracks me up.

So this weekend I WORKED!! I’ve worked an average of 11 hours per day since I’ve been in SA but I have not complained because it’s all for the cause. But this weekend we embarked on a MISSION to set up a new office, not just an office, an entire 1535 square meter, 4 story building, you do the math…

I did all that I felt was necessary to get this right, from managing vendors, screaming and kicking to get things right to hunching over a hoover and vacuuming every inch of this building myself to make it beautiful, I’m talking breaking out the furniture polish and everything! Because let’s be honest; presentation is everything. Why build a fabulous new house and hand it over to the new owners, filthy? Since this is SA and people (smart for them) don’t work on the weekend, I had to put on my maid hat and get busy and honestly, I did so happily because no one forced me to, you know?

Fast forward to this morning, the first thing people started doing was complaining about the smallest things; “my ceiling tile in my office is open”. Okay well, the alarm company is making some changes to the system because it’s too sensitive and we had 3 false alarms over the weekend! “Why didn’t we get the white boards and art work hung up over the weekend”? WTF? Okay how about we moved two offices into this building over the weekend and hanging paintings was not in the scope of work for the movers or me for that matter! “This light bulb is out”. “We need to build a climate controlled area for these HIV test kits”. Okay why in the world did you not give me that specification (even though I asked each manager) before construction? Let me call my architect and engineers up and handle that right fast. Then my favorite; “I want my desk this way because I don’t want to look up and stare someone in the face, and when you turn it around I want this bloody screen off because it won’t look right”. Okay well, the way you want it won’t allow the door to open all the way or grant you proper egress from your desk to the door and the reason the screen is there is because the Chief wanted me to make the best use of all the old screens that we’ve already invested in and I did my best to grant that wish. So basically you want me to break fire code regulations to make you happy? I’ll get right on that. It might sit better with me if they at least ASKED instead of demanding but honestly, if it were me and I knew that on Friday I was working in one office and I came in on Monday morning and the contents of that office had been moved to a gorgeous new one with all my shit in it and intact, not to mention all my necessary electronics had been moved, set up and WORKING, I would just unpack, enjoy all the natural sunlight seeping in through the huge floor to ceiling windows in my office, eat me a slice of the “welcome to our new office” cake and Shut the hell up!! But hey, that’s just me.

This feels like making a “just because” elaborate dinner for your man, cleaning HIS whole house from top to bottom just to make the load lighter on him and he comes home and says “that’s all you’ve done”? Or, “why didn’t you make a loaded baked potato to accompany that steak instead of steak fries”? Or for a man; noting a favorite new CD in your girl’s car and copping some tickets for her to see that artist in a town nearby and she says “oh you too cheap to buy front row seats”? Some people are so “obliviously selfish”, but I digress...