So my wife puts on her Facebook page that a city worker in a backhoe who happened to come upon us while we were out for our fourth shoveling session of the day took two minutes out of what he was doing to move snow around our car.
Somehow this was a bad idea.
Two of her Facebook friends used the post as an opportunity to complain that their streets hadn’t been plowed, but hey, it’s nice that a city worker had time to help you.
This is what the world is coming to.
Somebody does something nice for somebody else, and other people complain because what else do people do these days but complain.
That’s not a question; it’s a statement about our times.
The other day, a non-profit that had asked me a few years ago to design a website needed some help, so I helped them, but apparently not fast enough for one of the board members, who decided that a series of reply all emails to gently remind me to do what she wanted done the exact way she wanted it done was a good idea.
I raised issue with the tone of the request, and then all hell broke loose, proving once again that no good deed indeed goes unpunished.
Back to the snow plow issue: it’s almost as if you shouldn’t thank somebody for doing something nice anymore because if you do so on Facebook, you’re as likely to stir up kvetching as you are to give that person credit.
Here’s what we ought to start doing, or rather stop doing: nice things. Because we all know that if you do something nice for one person, what you’re really doing is not doing something nice for the 6 billion-plus other people that we share oxygen with.
But if somebody effs up and does something nice for you, by God don’t thank them for it, especially publicly, because all you’re really doing when you thank them for doing something nice for you is acknowledge how they have erred in not actually doing something nice for the entirety of humankind.
And we call pigs pigs …
Chris Graham is the editor of AugustaFreePress.com. He’s only about doing nice things for him these days.
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