One time I had a customer go spastic on me because she saw one of the police dogs on the town’s K-9 memorial died at only 4 years old and was demanding to know what happened to the poor thing. I tried to shrug it off and said I didn’t know (there were rumors the dog was poisoned but it was never proven; I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring that up).
Every time since then she’s come in the building, she’s interrogated me about did they find out what happened to the poor dog yet and why aren’t they trying harder to find out. She just about starts bawling over this dog that died in 2008 and that she probably never knew existed until she saw the memorial.
I wonder how these people react when they lose a family member (:rolleyes: my bad, a HUMAN family member)
Whether face-to-face or digitally, there are certain things that are hard to tell someone. “Your grief has become inappropriate and is making me uncomfortable” is probably one of those things. If this was someone you wanted to remain friends with, would you seriously just say, “Hey, you need to get over your dead dog?”
Oh yeah. I had two coworkers freak out for weeks because there was a dog lost in our neighborhood, putting up signs on our door, windows, asking around, until the boss put a stop to it. It’s not even your dog! Do it on your own time!
Yep, no one should ever blow off a little steam online about a quirk or a pathology or anything, because if you do, you’re a shitty excuse for a human being who doesn’t know how to relate to people any longer! Might as well forbid any mini-rant threads in the Pit while we’re at it.
Or, you know, maybe people could give him some constructive advice and a pat on the back.
… Nah, screw that. Heap on the abuse!
Ogre, I get it. It’s hard to tell a friend that you think they’re being too prolonged in grief over a pet, because the knee-jerk reaction is often “you don’t understand/you hate animals.” Plus it just feels insensitive. And every single day, seeing homages to a dead dog can get a little bit grating.
Yes, of course, umm, duh? Especially if the alternative is to complain about it to a forum of strangers in a sneaky-behind your back sort of way. Really, you find this a difficult thing to say f2f? It would be a no-brainer to me; I don’t get the delicacy and fear, here. Perhaps this is a generational difference?
When did telling the plain truth kindly become a scary thing? I seriously don’t get this premise. Seriously, if this sort of social scaredy-cat-ness is the new normal, I am really glad to be part of the old guard where we are so unsure of human interaction, that we don’t have to parse everything through social networks for appropriateness first.
They totally do! “Oh, the dogs die, I can’t take that, I’d always be adopting them, I’d have a million puppies!”
For the record, one of them does genuinely help doggies - she at one point had four adopted doggies and two adopted cats, and she’s a very good dog owner, but the other has a purebred doggie only.
The lost dog just irritated me. And then they wanted me to care! I mean, I hope the owners find it, and all, and if I see it, I’ll try to catch it, but what more can I do?
