(no subject)

[quarrel]

So I'm with shaterri at a meat-and-cheese shop on Granville Island. He's just browsing for the moment, and asking some questions of one of the salespeople. She's rather curt. It's understandable. This is in Vancouver, so the place is swamped with sightseeing Olympic tourists, he hasn't bought anything yet, and she's got a thick accent (though I must point out this is not a part of Canada where people primarily speak French...in fact, it's one of the many parts that's quite the opposite). We eventually moved on with plans to come back and buy what we wanted closer to our exit time.

We get a different salesperson when we return. The first woman is still there, and while she's idle between customers and our active vendor was weighing one of our purchases, Shaterri pulls the kind of stunt I only dream of.

He says something pleasant and light-hearted to her.

You can probably guess what happens next. She smiles, lightens up, jokes back with him briefly, and everyone goes away happier.

It drives me crazy to see people get away with this when I can't. Whenever I stick by my guns and act according to my personal moral code rather than doing what most people would, or what's most practical, or what common sense or game theory say is the best bet in the long run — don't take free samples of food you don't intend to buy, let other people off the elevator before you enter it yourself, don't vote on issues you don't understand — I get labeled irrational and stupid and neurotic and inflexible (and cynical, but that's by my mother, who doesn't know what the word really means).

What's the deal? Am I picking the wrong situations to stand by my principles? (But are they still principles if you pick and choose when to follow them? I say "no".) Do I have the wrong ones to begin with? Am I just bad at relating to people? (Okay, probably "yes" on that one.) Is Shaterri in truth being practical rather than principled, following a rule he has personally observed benefits him more often than a priori estimates suggest and in actuality closer to a "the end justifies the means" kind of guy than to someone who attempts to do Right because it is Right?

Comments

[quarrel.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot. I can't find this "Pauly Principle" or any famous sociologists with that surname. All I get is the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and that's way off base.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Eh, maybe I got the name wrong. It was something silly and catchy-sounding like that though.