FWIW, I have talked with a few of the more outspoken malcontents, and none of them can really articulate a reason that they think Gina did something wrong. “It just isn’t right” seems to be a popular opinion, and there are a couple of people who feel that Gina should have asked first (and if she had, they insist, it would have been OK, but the fact that she didn’t seems to have rankled them).
My favorite part of this is that any one of them almost certainly would have paid for the gift card with a credit card. In most places, credit cards are the standard form of payment. I rarely see anyone write a check, and never see anyone pay for something over $20 with cash.
Moreover, if Gina had more money, she wouldn’t have benefitted and they would have been happy. What sort of fucked up, petty people are angry because someone having trouble paying their bills got a slight reprieve from buying this gift? They’re only angry because it helped her, which is really really sad. If it hadn’t helped her, no one would have said a thing.
What a bunch of losers.
Wow. This is getting out of hand. I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
I understand that just about everyone here agrees that Gina made no error. I think she did, but that it was a very minor error. People want me to justify my opinion. I’ve done my best to do so.
At this point, I can only fall back on the argument that this is the way I was raised. Manners and customs change in different places. One of the behaviours I learned as a part of good manners was not to take someone’s money and pay with a credit card. Just as I can’t justify the reasoning behind holding my knife in my right hand, never in my left, I can’t justify the reasoning behind this beyond the arguments I’ve made.
I hope, though, that Giraffe and others don’t dump me in with “a bunch of losers” who have nothing better to do than try to prevent others from benefitting from my actions. As I’ve said before, while I agree that taking cash and paying credit isn’t the height of good manners, for me it’s no cause to take umbrage. I’ve got no problems with Gina as a person, and I’m not trying to justify her coworkers’ actions. Different strokes, different folks; makes no difference to me.
I’m done arguing about such a minor point on manners, please and thank you.
Gee, and here I thought manners consisted of not begrudging others extremely minor conveniences when they’re doing you a favor anyway. Shows what I know, I guess.