Another week comes to a close. What an incredible week it has been. Of course, I learned something...perceptions are an important part of how you choose to accept a variety of things that come at you. For instance, at work one of my fellow co-workers asked if another of my co-workers spoke to me in 'that' manner often. Like you, my reader, I was quite baffled by his question--had no clue what he was talking about at all. He relayed a conversation of sorts that had happened earlier in the day when one of the gals had given me a work order to make some changes to an account. As she walked away, I asked her if she had completed the routing or would I need to and her comment was that she had just received the work order and hadn't had time to route it..that she would get to it when I completed the change I needed to make, and so forth. The other co-worker, who had overheard this conversation and was now inquiring with me, had perceived a tone of snippiness (is that a word?). Ahhhh!! Now some light was shed on the original question he asked! Without batting an eye, I told him that I had not perceived what she said in the same way as he did. I guess in a nutshell, I perceived her as answering my question and no more than that while he perceived her as being hateful towards me. He said that I was a better person than he cause he would not have taken it off of her. Funny, he is always complimenting me on how I perceive things....only I never really looked at it until now. Perhaps, to some degree, everything about perception is a choice based upon past experience or ideas formed about specific people and situations. I believe I chose not to be offended by her comment while he chose to think I should have been offended (as he apparently would have been) at the way she quipped back to me. It has been my experience over the past 2 years (in this job), that he and some of my other co-workers 'look' for and choose to hear things in such a way that, to me, seem skewed. I would say possibly manipulating what they hear to make it what they want to hear giving them justification to feel contempt for others. Hmmm....something for which I need further pondering!