R-E-S-P-E-C-T
I like to respect the people I work with. In fact, I have a really hard time when I don't respect the people I have to deal with on a regular basis. It's one of the reasons all my friends are smart--I find it very hard to deal with people who are not smart.
Lately, I've found out a whole slew of random things about some people I work with--from drunken debauchery to dysfunctional relationships--and it put me in a bad mood for a ridiculously long time. Now, to be sure, these are not people who are good friends of mine, if I'd call them friends at all. They are not people who I will have anything to do with when I graduate college.
But still. These were the people I went to an Ivy League college to be around. The people who are smart and intelligent and motivated and ambitious. The people who will be the movers and shakers of tomorrow. People who I respected for their intellligence and skills even though I knew our morality and belief systems were at odds. But all that's a lot different than hearing first-hand from them about things I'd rather not have known. Things that put them completely opposed to my Torah values.
And that's really hard. Because it's really hard to work with people whom you cannot respect even a little.
posted by Eli7 @ 5:25 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
So...you don't respect them, because they don't subscribe to the viewpoint that 20 percent of .2 percent of the world's populations subscribes to?
Someone's sounding a little fundimentalist these days...and it's not me.
That's not fair, J. I didn't lose respect for them because they're not Orthodox Jews. I didn't lose respect for them because they have relationships and drink. I lost respect for them because of the ridiculous extremes.
Somebody who routinely gets drunk and passes out and needs to call her guy friends to help put her to bed. Umm, yeah. And I'm not even going down the relationship route, but let's just say it's not that they have physical relationships that bothers me; it's the flip attitude toward the whole thing that really gets me.
Maybe that's still fundamentalist, I don't know. I don't think everyone needs to or should be an Orthodox Jew, but there are still some moral guidelines I believe everyone should hold by--they're called the sheva mitzvot b'nei noach.
it's a harsh world out there and it is hard and takes strength to work in a place where people act in a way that is different to what you have grown up to be like.
neverthless, i guess you just have to make sure that any lack of respect does not effect your working environment.
My colleagues at work are highly educated very smart and successful. However I would describe many of them as having a real lack of (what I describe as) mentshlicheit. They go out drinking 4-5 nights a week, mess around on their significant others and do all sorts of things I would never have a taavah for. But, I respect them for their abilities as it relates to me. I.e. I only judge them for their performance at work because that is the relationship I have with them. You should only judge people based on their interaction with you, not how they lead their lives.
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