Moral Failure Over A Cup Of Coke

An incident at work tonight bugged me enough that I felt I had to write about it. A couple came in to bowl with their two children. I'd put the kids at about 12 years old. They were friendly people, and they didn't appear to have any problems with the pinsetters or anything like that. A minor scoring problem arose, due to their error, but we fixed it promptly. So here's what happened that made their stay noteworthy.

One of the kids ordered a drink, which he spilled as he ran back to his lane. He asked if he could get another one. I told him that he could, but that he'd have to pay for it. He looked annoyed, but he went back to his lane, presumably because he didn't have enough money. Moments later, however, his mother approached the counter with her son. She was obviously annoyed: "My son spilled his drink. He'd like another one." It was a demand. "Of course," I said, in my customer-service voice. "That'll be three dollars." She wasn't impressed with my response: "But he didn't get any of the first one!" I couldn't hear her properly over the background noise, so I apologized, and I asked her to repeat what she had said. She did, but this time she mocked my attempts to be polite.

It's worth saying that, at this point, she completely erased any inclination I might have had to meet her halfway--let alone to meet her all the way, which I might have done, depending on the circumstances. It's only a drink, after all. But I don't respond well to rude and unreasonable people. I get snarky.

I acknowledged that her son dropped his drink almost immediately after he got it, and that he did it accidentally, but I pointed out that we couldn't be responsible for such things, as they're out of our control. I didn't spill his drink. She said, "So, what are you responsible for?" There was more than a hint of derision in her voice. Sarcasm crept into mine, "I'm sorry, I don't follow." "We get chintzed out of the drink and the bowling." Now I was annoyed: "You didn't get 'chintzed' out of the drink. Your son dropped it. As for the bowling, what problems have you had?" She mentioned the scoring problem, and she said that it had happened again. She was obviously grasping at straws. I told her that if she had told us about it, we could have helped her, just as we did the first time. With that, she stormed off.

Rudeness and stupidity don't bother me all that much. Normally, I shrug off these sorts of people. This one bothered me, and I couldn't figure out why. Near as I could tell, there were three failures in moral reasoning at work: 1) She had failed to learn one of the basic lessons of adulthood, namely, that other people are not responsible for one's own actions; 2) She offered a bad-faith excuse for her behavior when she mentioned the scoring problem, which wasn't a problem until she required one--and, anyway, it was caused by her actions; 3) She was rude and insulting.

Still, these people don't bother me after the fact. Usually, I complain about them with my coworkers and we laugh at how ridiculous they are. Another customer, with whom I had been having a friendly conversation at the counter before the boy's mother interrupted us, expressed her amazement at the woman's behavior. I dismissed it, "Eh, she's a bitch." But it still bugged me. Then, about an hour later, it hit me. I realized why her behavior bothered me as much as it did.

She behaved this way in front of her son. She was telling her son that it's alright to blame others for his mistakes and to do whatever it takes to get others to pay for them, even if rudeness and dishonesty are the means to that end. Once I realized this, I imagined myself in the mother's situation. The correct way to handle this, I thought, would be to explain to my son that, although he dropped his drink accidentally, and that accidents happen, he's not entitled to another one. Then I might have given him some more money to buy one--or not, depending on whether I wanted to emphasize the "accidents happen" or the "you're responsible for your actions" part of the lesson. I would not have done what she did.