I’m really, really trying to bite my tongue in IMHO, but I have to say it’s just deplorable what you did.
And I don’t think you “get it.”
When you don’t know someone, always assume they’re on the edge and anything you do might push them over. Here’s a guy who you recognize was probably very poor - poorer than you, who have been embarrassed about being poor, have ever been - who was doing something you admit that you would be humiliated to do, and rather than show the compassion of a child, much less Christ, you decide to deride him, encourage others to laugh at him, and then come here to offer justifications for it?
Man, I hope he wasn’t feeling suicidal when he left that store. Not what I’d want on my conscience.
Ok, I’ve tried not to reply to this thread, but I keep thinking about it.
There should be no excuses, START. You humiliated that man into leaving the store, and I wish I had the restraint he did. In all honesty, had it been one of my worse days, I would have socked you in the mouth. And your idiot friends.
While it is commendable that you did recognize what you did was wrong, It is too late.
And I agree with whoever said that the worker needed an ass-chewing for laughing at the man.
Apologies to both START and the Mods for being out of line with my comments. It seems that I am guilty of the same sin as the OP by not biting my tongue until it is appropriate. :smack:
What you did, Start, was to insult and attack a total stranger for no reason. You should know better. You need to learn some control. “I couldn’t help myself” does not get you a free pass. If you want to get respect, you have to be willing to give respect. Nuff said.
No, I’m not going to say that what START did was right. But I don’t think everyone should be piling up, either. I used to have (and still do, to a small extent) impulse control problems. If everybody had piled up on me the way you seem to be piling up here, I would have felt like a pile of dog excrement, to put it nicely.
One thing I’ve learned about this place is that people will tell you if you’re being stupid. Now, this isn’t generally a bad thing, especially since they’re usually right. In my first year or two here, when I was quite a young person, I posted about how much I loved my girlfriend and asked if I should tell her I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. A few people chimed in to tell me I was being very naive and some other things. I then took offense to that and started a pit thread, and was heaped on some more. At the time, I felt “like a pile of dog excrement,” but I stuck around here, grew as a person and realized they were right.
I think they’re doing him a favor, just as they did me one back then.
Nah, not at all. I was just sharing my experience since it directly related to the situation at hand. I was about your age when all of that happened, actually.
It’s really interesting to go back now (at nearly 21) and look at stuff I wrote and how I interacted with people four or five years ago. Sometimes embarrassing and sometimes enlightening.
I was born into a wealthy family and have also made myself pretty wealthy through my own endeavors.
When I was growing up I lived in a very exclusive part of town, and many friends I had there would routinely make jokes about people we would see going into thrift stores (btw thrift stores don’t = used) and sometimes even go into the stores and buy “junk” for purely comedic purposes (they also went into Salvation Army stores and did the same.) I didn’t think it was funny then, and at the time I repeatedly said, “Hey guys last I checked all of us are better off than them solely because of our parents.”
Now as an adult I have many friends who will speak dismissively of “people from the wrong part of town” et cetera, and it’s no different, and it’s wrong.
Imagine if I parked my Jag in front of a thrift store and leaned on it laughing and jeering everyone who went inside. I’d almost definitely be in a fight, have the police called et cetera, and that behavior is no different from what you’ve done.
Next time you think about doing something like this imagine how you would feel if someone much wealthier than you ridiculed your economic status.
Then what precisely was your motivation for starting an IMHO thread? Going to MPSIMS and writing a thread that says “I did a terrible thing today and now I feel bad” is compleely different than going into the Opinion forum, where you are implicitly asking for other posters opinions though you may not specifically say so.
Indeed it is in the style you are using to post, as well as some of your inadequate rationalizations that try to mitigate the behaviour:
(NOTE: This isn’t intended to be pile-onish, just breaking down what’s not working here.)
“I said the same thing that most people would be thinking.”
– But they had the class to keep politely silent until you opened the floodgates.
“I wasn’t trying to be rude because I just asked basically if it was a dare…”
– That was no genuine question there. That’s like me looking at you and asking “Why does your face look like that, were you in an accident?”
“…everybody took it from there and probably made the poor guy cry.”
– That chunk of the sentence looks an awful lot like you’re trying to shift responsibility, better to own up and acknowledge they wer following your lead.
"Why would he be embarassed? Obviously any person that can walk into a store and buy a few pairs of previously worn underwear should have a pretty high embarrassment thresh hold.
– It’s one thing to have the “embarassment threshold” to buy possibly used undies and quite enought to be publicly ridiculed for doing so. This suggests you’re trying to minimize the effect of your behavior.
You claim to be somewhat remorseful, and yet your choice of language implies that you’re trying to shift responsibility around because you were “just asking the innocent question that was one everyone’s minds anyway.”
START, I honestly do believe that you regret the incident. And an acknowledgement and admission of inappropraite behaviour is good proof that you do care about your actions and the affect they have on other people. But if you’re going to be in IMHO, a forum that solicit’s opinions, try a different tact. Try less self-justifying and instead maybe ask something like “How can I have better impulse control to prevent an embarassing incident like the one I caused today?”
That may lead to more constructive input, less pile-onage, and will create a friendlier climate for getting advice on how to keep yourself from running off at the mouth when you shouldn’t.
You’re entirely right, as far as you go. But please take notice that I and at least four other Dopers who have posted here did not join a “pile-on” ragging START but rather tried to show him how to learn from the experience. (That’s not thrilling when you’re a teen, either, but IMO it’s a step above being the object of a pile-on.)
You know, a good way to START being more considerate and tactful would be to START minding your own business and not look at what other people are buying. Or doing in general.
Also, be advised that some poor people can fight real good. You’re lucky that guy wasn’t waiting for you outside the store.
When I was about 15 I discovered that I had a talent for saying mean things that made my friends laugh. it’s a seductive trap to fall into. If you’ve got a quick wit it’s dirt easy to crack a joke at someone else’s expense. It’s much harder to be amusing all on your own.
Think of it this way: being clever is a gift. It’s like having a superpower. One that you can use for good, or for evil. Using it for evil is easy. Using it for good is hard.
How about we do a thread where we all post the ignorant, rude things we did as young adults? I’ve got a couple that still make me cringe with embarassment. START, you done bad, and I hope you realize it and as part of your atonement you do better in the future.
It’s not enough to just say “I’ve got poor impulse control.” That’s just an excuse. Why do you have poor impulse control? What are you trying to achieve when you do things like that? What thoughts were going through your head? One thing that might help you to get to know yourself better is meditation. Seriously.
START, I can not help but notice that some other posters have referenced other threads you have started that are similar to this one. In very rough terms a pattern emerges:
You experience an incident of impulsive behavior.
You post a thread detailing the incident, in which you confess to bad behavior.
Could it be, in recognizing and dealing with your impulse control issues, you have established a pattern in which you “confess” in order to somehow absolve yourself of further guilt, etc. Then, once absolved, you go out and “sin” again?
We see this as stereotypical behavior in the cartoon “bad boy” who does something bad, then states out loud, “I’ve been a baaaaad boy.” Then winks and runs off to do something else bad.
Could this, somehow, be an element of what we are observing?
(I am not a psychologist, and I expect there will be plenty of posters lining up to smack me around for stating all this, but, I call 'em how I see 'em.)
Never start a fight with someone down on there luck, or anyone you don’t know in general. You have no clue if they have a knife, a gun, or are just plain tough. Three on one don’t mean much when it’s 3 high schoolers against a guy who’s down on his luck, with a gun, who possibly has nothing to lose.
Tragic story from when I was much younger. College days, in town some student at my school thought it’d be funny to piss on some sleeping homeless guy. The guy woke up during the incident, got enraged, and stabbed the student to death.
That’s why you just don’t do things like this, aside from what the guy did being plain horrible and wrong it’s also a huge risk. You never know what random people are going to do, and you have no idea how dangerous some people can be.
Imagine if you were homeless, I think your breaking point from “well behaved citizen” to “enraged homicidal maniac” is very easy to reach.