An angry George lists three times in the last month that Suzie failed to respond to his emails
In a quiet moment, I was able to see the humanity in a grocery store employee parked next to me. I saw the exhaustion in her eyes. I felt it. I would have given her a hug of encouragement, but we’re still dealing with social distancing.
The composer Tom Douglas felt the humanity of a woman crying in a phone booth, with her little boy wrapped around her legs. But he failed to do anything about it. Instead, he just got in his Suburban and drove away.
Here in the United States, if we want to thrive again as a nation, we can’t allow ourselves to get in the Suburban and drive away. We need to judge less and be a little more like those Lincoln salesmen who treated Jonce Thomas with dignity and respect.
We have to resuscitate the gift of empathy, double down on kindness, and remember that the reason why we exist is to love one another and make the world a better place.
Your manager questions someone on your team. The team member swears he sent the invoice and suggests Suzie was responsible for follow-up. Suzie fumes at the accusation, and claims that George was tasked with sending the invoice. “And we all know how distracted George can get,” Suzie adds.
An angry George lists three times in the last month that Suzie failed to respond to his emails, and then turns on Doug, saying, “Doug was lead on this project, how come he didn’t stay on top of the deliverables?”
The only winner in this workplace dustup is Peter Flannigan, who owns the pub across the street where everyone will go after work to drink and commiserate in their respective cliques.
“Accountability separates the wishers in life from the action-takers that care enough about their future to account for their daily actions.”― John Di Lemme
Nobody likes to take responsibility when things go wrong. It’s much easier to deflect, deny, sidestep, and point the finger at others.
What’s worse, this type of behavior doesn’t just happen in the workplace. It happens at home too and in our relationships.
What is this unhealthy behavior that feels good but eventually makes us miserable?
At a price per dose of about $19.50 for Pfizer’s 2-dose vaccine, the company stands to make $15 billion in revenue. What’s preventing them from raising the price in the future? After all, who can put a price on the benefits of a viable vaccine? Well, who besides Pfizer?
I know I sound bitter, but I’ve been burned before. Immediately after my daughter’s cancer began progressing, her oncologist attempted to prescribe a very promising oral chemotherapy drug. From the time he decided to try this miracle drug to the moment it arrived at our door, two had months passed.
That was two months that the tumors had time to grow and spread.
That was two months of constant phone calls, faxing paperwork, and staying up late at night wondering if it would be approved, if it would ever arrive.
We danced that dance for the length of her treatment. It was a hard lesson in how much power pharmaceutical companies wield over my life and the lives of the people I love.
If the price of my daughter’s medication hadn’t been so high, would we have gotten her life-saving drugs more quickly? Would she have lived to see her 16th birthday? Would she, in fact, be alive today? These are questions that will haunt me forever.
And now, as we all wait anxiously for Pfizer or another company to produce a breakthrough coronavirus vaccine, I’m once again at the mercy of an industry whose primary motivation is profit.
And yet, I’m lucky. The vaccine won’t be prohibitively expensive for me, though I’m betting that’s not the case for everyone. That means people will continue to die from COVID-19 even though a treatment exists that can save them. This won’t change until healthcare stops being a commodity. I hope that happens in my lifetime, but at this point I seriously doubt it will.
According to an article by Chris Smith in Filevine.com, blame is contagious. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“In 2009, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology released a study about the blame contagion. Psychologists Nathanael Fast and Larissa Tiedens conducted four experiments to determine if and why blame seems to spread from person to person. What they found was that the ‘blame contagion encourages a person to engage in blaming behaviors shortly after being exposed to another individual making a blame attribution for a failure.’ When we see someone defending themselves and blaming others, we reflexively defend ourselves as well.”
We deflect and place blame on others in order to protect ourselves and our self-image. Projecting the responsibility onto others is a defense mechanism that does little to help us grow or become more effective, mature individuals.
We think that blaming others will protect our reputation, but usually, it sullies our reputation. Most often people know who screwed up at work. When the guilty party fails to take responsibility by blaming others, we think less of that person.
Beyond the damage to our reputation, blaming others also damages our health. As the Filevine.com article notes:
“Blaming others and holding blame inside yourself creates a negative mental state. ‘The data that negative mental states cause heart problems is just stupendous. The data is just as established as smoking, and the size of the effect is the same,’ says Dr. Charles Raison. Further, he estimates that 90% of illness originates from negative mental states caused by stress, namely — you guessed it — blame.”
Resentment is like drinking poison
Beyond the workplace, blame is equally damaging in relationships. To both the blamer and the recipient.
Consider the husband who finds fault with everything you do. He complains that your job intrudes on your relationship. He belittles your hobby because he thinks you should be more focused on him.
He‘s blaming you when the real problem is his own insecurity. Rather than do the hard work of fixing himself, he blames you for everything. It’s easier than taking responsibility for his own dissatisfaction. But in the end, he’s sowing resentment in you.
