Forgiveness

It is not something you cannot live without, but it is something good to have. About two months ago, about ten of us dropped by a japanese restaurant for a meal. Due to a series of miscommunication by a waitress, the food that arrived was not what we were expecting and several of my colleagues raised hell. The manager was called in, only after the poor waitress had been berated for over ten minutes. It must have seemed like an eternity to her.

After the dinner, I had a little chat with my colleagues about this. There is nothing complicated about the incident, and I felt that we had blown it out of proportions. If it is an honest mistake (and in this case, there is no way to prove otherwise) we either accept it, or we reject it outright. What point is there in making things already more difficult than it is?

Human beings make mistakes.

That is almost the defining feature; that is possibly the essence of being human. Some of us probably would not be here if not for parents screwing up and learning to live with their mistakes. There is probably a good lesson to learn from that.

Therefore, there was absolutely no need to make life difficult for the waitress.

Mistakes were made, wrongs were committed, from wherever the anger of being victimized arose, scolding would not have helped matters. I can conceive of scenarios where even though in full knowledge of the impotence of our actions, we can still be justified in going down fighting.

But this is not one of them.

There is no moral imperative to do so. There is no rational reason to do so. There is no guiding principle to do so.

“Customer is always right”

Being in customer service for years, experience tells me that the customers who say that are the ones who make things quite ugly for themselves.

By a twist of fate, I ended up in the same restaurant last night. And I took the opportunity to apologize the waitress. I had to recount the incident in its full, gory details before she can remember what happened. I think she has forgotten whatever happened.

Maybe she has forgotten all about the incident, maybe it was not even of significance to her, maybe she has walked on, maybe it did not matter to her whether I apologized, but I just felt that I had to do it.

I still do not know why I bothered to apologize, after all, I do not really care how the world perceives me. But I was seeking a closure, a way to walk away and I figured I want to end the chapter leaving it a better place.

I have done what I needed to do. But her job is far from finished.

She got our orders wrong three times last night.