Whine time.
Some of you may be aware that recently, my work email address was temporarily deleted. This meant emails sent to me bounced back to their senders as 'undeliverable', I could not retrieve any emails or view my calendar and I was deleted from the online staff directory. I had to have my entire email account and profile restored from the last backup which was by then, ten days old, so about ten days' worth of emails and calendar entries have vanished from my work account.
I lost a total of eight hours of productivity - essentially one full day - as a result of this mess. A mess that could have been avoided if a colleague had paid better attention to his task.
His task was to complete a one-page online request on my behalf to upgrade my email from an old rusty hunk'a junk platform to a newer one and NOT tick the box that says 'delete current account' before I can actually be upgraded. But that, dear readers, is precisely what he did. (This information was not volunteered by the otherwise most glorious helpful IT help-desk jockey - I had to dig around and place a few special calls to find out why this happened and who was responsible).
When I called my colleague to let him know what he had done and to ask that he (a) check he hadn't done this to anyone else and (b) pay closer attention with future requests, did he apologise? No. Did he acknowledge the enormity of his error and the massive inconvenience to me? No.
However, he DID admit that the reason he ticked the wrong box was that he was probably balancing a few things at the same time. Like what mofo? Were you using a mouth-operated pointer while juggling with both hands? Were you distracted by the wallpaper of pretty kittens on your smartphone? Or was the sound of the two loneliest brain cells in the world bouncing around in your skull so loud you couldn't concentrate?
I would have happily accepted any explanation if only he'd had the good grace, empathy, emotional intelligence and manners to just say 'sorry' straight off. Simply, sincerely and with genuine remorse.
If I had caused something like this, I can only imagine my reaction - mortification, shame, embarrassment, guilt and an offer of a tray of home-baked brownies/cupcakes/cookies and a coffee as a token of apology. Instant. Knee-jerk. My hands would be reaching for the flour and butter right after I'd hung up the phone. Extreme, but typical.
His (non) reaction made me think of the Greek concept of 'filotimo' (or 'philotimo' - Google it), that complex, nuanced collection of virtues comprising empathy, grace, generosity, hospitality, consideration and a fundamental, implicit understanding of the 'why', 'how' and 'when' of righting wrongs, whether large or small.
People who embody this quality aren't necessarily better people (I suspect I am a far, far nastier person than my deadbeat colleague), and a person who truly embodies 'filotimo' would not indulge in anonymous character assassination via blog (See? Told you I was nasty).
However, there is something truly dispiriting about people who display these random manifestations of thoughtlessness. Are they stupid? Somewhere on the autism spectrum? Were they not raised right? Are they twats? Or all of the above?
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