Personality Flaws

Most of us have probably taken a personality test or two (or ten) in our lives. I’ve never been one to take a lot of them but I do like the more detailed ones. I like having more than a short paragraph to read for answers and insights. Very short tests can’t be super accurate or provide detailed information because they just can’t. They don’t collect enough information to put out much. I don’t like ridiculously long ones either though, because I get sick of them by the end and feel like I’m no longer giving good answers.

A couple years ago, one of my coworkers showed me a test called 16personalities that fits right into the long-enough-to-feel-accurate but not-long-enough-to-make-mad category. I think there’s a more psychology-esque official name for the test but the website is just 16personalities.com . I really like this test and now I force it upon my friends fairly regularly. I think it gives really good information that lays out personality types in a very fair way that brings up plenty of positives but doesn’t ignore negative traits. It’s also fun and visually pleasing so those are bonuses.

When my coworker showed it to me I realized that I had actually already taken it as part of a job interview so I already had my results. There are 16 personality types (if you didn’t guess that already) and I am an in the Diplomat category, more specifically, Assertive Advocate.

The most interesting part of my results was not the general overview of my personality type. I was significantly more impressed by the “strategy” portion. That’s the part that explains how my type deals with everyday life and how I make decisions, which is usually what I most like about any personality test. I think that seeing how we deal with problems on a daily basis (from an outside, largely nonbiased source) is far more valuable than getting a generic, “You like to make good decisions with your brain!”

The official strategy I utilize is Confident Individualism. Which sounds really fancy. But the first two paragraphs give a quick little introduction to this strategy:

“Confident Individualists tend to trust in themselves. They enjoy their own company and don’t mind spending time alone to pursue their interests. Over time, this can give these personalities an impressive range of skills and interesting ideas.

“But these types take pride in their skills for their own sake, not to impress others. They tend not to see the point in social displays and bragging. While they’re proud of who they are, these personality types don’t always feel the need to prove themselves to anyone else. They prefer substance to superficiality and personal honesty to playing along.”

This is all pretty spot on for me. I do take pride in my skills but I rarely, if ever compare myself to others. When I’m writing I endeavor to compare myself to my past self, not to other authors. I don’t need to be a better writer than Stephen King or James Patterson or Nora Roberts, I just need to be a better writer than Cornelia Grace 3 years ago. I also greatly value substance in my friendships, and I hate seeing vapid bragging and shallow nonsense on social media. So just going off the first little bit, I can tell this is going to be accurate. It’s almost scary HOW accurate it is though.

Something that really hit me hard was how it says this, “At times, Confident Individualists may miss information and opportunities that challenge their views because they simply don’t place much importance on others’ approval.” Which, first of all, how dare they call me out like that. And second of all, this is definitely something I struggle with. I especially find that if a topic doesn’t naturally interest me then it is almost impossible to make myself care about it and do more research on it. I genuinely don’t mind my views being challenged but I do fall into the trap of not even caring about challenges because I just genuinely don’t care what others think about me. I would consider this a flaw in my personality. I don’t appreciate that I am this way. Not caring about gaining approval from others can be good but I feel like I often go into apathetic overload.

This isn’t to say that I don’t care about my friends or that I literally don’t care about anything. That’s something the test results did point out: “In their personal relationships, these types tend to be strong and honest. Their loyalty and affection are genuine rather than forced. These personalities only express respect and care if they really feel them. Fortunately, if they do feel them, they see no reason to hide how they feel.” This is also accurate. I am very passionate and I care about a lot of things. I have strong opinions. I can just be pretty apathetic as well, that’s character complexity. Dual feelings/behaviors. Not necessarily contradictions, just many angles of the same person.

I did think it was appropriate that it pointed out that “this relaxed self-assurance can lead to complacency.” Because I have felt for a long time that’s one of my worst flaws. I get very comfortable, no matter where I am, really. It’s a bad habit and I felt quite called out by that statement. My sister in law recently wrote a blog post about culturally acceptable laziness. Her post, combined with me looking into these test results, really kicked me in the butt. I definitely see myself being lazy recently and it’s not because I am not a hard worker or because I don’t want to do anything but sit around in my house watching Youtube videos. It’s because I’ve become complacent.

I’ve mentally decided that this is fine. I don’t want this to be fine. I want to work for more. I want to be better. I don’t want to be complacent or lazy. I want to be better. Already, I’d been trying to work on these flaws. I saw them in myself, if only peripherally. But now I can see them clearly and I will be working on being better, not perfect, but always working on myself.

What I Can Do

Life is messy and unpredictable. Not my life, really, but most of life. My friends have messy lives. My life is perfect. (Please contain your laughter.) My life is certainly uneventful but far from perfect. This last week, life threw a curve ball at my workplace and our general manager has been sick in the hospital.

Lucky for us, we have a super amazing assistant general manager and a good management team in general so we’re keeping our heads above water so far. I really miss having our general manager though. We’re all having to figure out things that we would normally never need to do. Everyone has had to step up and be willing to get things done and I’m really proud of our whole team for doing that. They’re a great group and I appreciate every one of them.

I wouldn’t describe work as being hectic… yet. But all of us are working more than what we’re used to and I know it’s going to catch up with us eventually (hopefully not until our manager is feeling better)! Until then, we’ll press on. I think we’d press on even if we weren’t feeling it. I can honestly say our team cares about each other and we’ve all already proven that we’ll do what it takes to make sure we take care of each other. So I’m not worried about work. It’s certainly less than ideal to go without our amazing general manager for a while but I would rather do that and see her get better than to have her kill herself trying to run the store being sick.

I think that, in these instances, when a friend is struggling or sick, I often also struggle with what I can do for them. I haven’t actually texted my manager at all. Not because I don’t want to, because I do. I want to know how she’s doing and I want her to know that I care. But I also know that she has limited energy and that she probably isn’t sleeping well and I don’t want to blow up her phone/keep her up. So I don’t text or call and I let our assistant general manager take care of getting me updates and asking store related questions. I can’t really bring her flowers or food. I don’t want to bother her with a visit (for the same reasons as not texting her). I feel very useless sometimes when I can’t do much for a friend in need.

But I don’t want to dwell on that. I want to figure out what I CAN do. How can I be helpful with the limitations I have? How can I serve my friend when I can’t necessarily DO much?

First off, I can be available to cover shifts at work. It seems small, and I definitely benefit from it as I do get paid for it. But I know how much my manager cares about the store and how important it is to her so making myself available IS helping her in some small way. I can keep my schedule open and I can make sacrifices to be there at work so my manager doesn’t have to add work stress to her already full plate of sick stress.

Secondly, I can make sure to prepare for her return. That sounds very formal but basically, I can do things I know she wanted done. The week before she got sick, she mentioned cleaning out the fridge in the employee area. She didn’t get around to it then so I went ahead and started working on it. (Here’s where I call her out as the person who leaves the most food containers in the fridge! SO MANY CONTAINERS!!) I brought all her containers home with me the other day and my amazing and incredible mother washed all of them. So now when my manager comes back she won’t have to worry about dragging home a million gross containers to deal with and the fridge will be clean as well.

Thirdly, (which probably should’ve been the firstly) I can pray for her and my coworkers. I can appeal to the highest power possible to heal my manager and to keep all of us at work healthy as well.

Fourthly, as a very general thing, I can just do my best. When she comes back, I want her to see that the store is intact and that we all worked very hard to keep things going well. I want her to be confident walking back in the door that she won’t have 5496 messes to clean up and 87 reports to write. That’s helpful to her too.

These times make me feel pretty useless and I have to remind myself that no matter how much I want to do everything, I cannot do it all. But I CAN figure out exactly what is in my power. I will do what I can and hope that’s enough.

We Care About You. We Don’t Care About You. We Care. We Don’t.

Working with the public is weird. Also, annoying and interesting and sometimes crazy. One thing that it can do is suck out all your compassion, trample it with horses, then shove it into a garbage disposal before spitting it out into a dirty litter box. So sometimes what some of us retail, minimum-wage workers do is just turn off our empathy and compassion while we’re dealing with customers. It’s easier to just not care about anyone rather than risk your emotions on an unruly customer.

At the same time, we’re human and can’t really turn off our emotions all the way. We DO care about our customers (at least all the people I’ve worked with do). We want you to have a good experience in our store/restaurant/etc. because… well, because why should we wish misery upon you? We want to save you money, that’s why we ask about coupons, discount cards, if you saw our sales, etc. We want you to have a good time in our establishment because if our roles were reversed we would hope you’d treat us the same way. Most of us also have a vested interest in building up the company we work for, not just for the paycheck but because we are part of it so we want it to do well.

I had a woman come up to my register and she asked how I was. Small talk. Meh. I go between a short, honest answer and a “fine” (which is usually still honest). This time I went with a short, “I’m tired. Had a late night.” Short, to the point, innocuous. She responded that she was also tired. Because she had just driven all night. Getting back from a funeral. A funeral for a 17 year old girl. A 17 year old girl who was killed by a drunk driver. I could see how much pain she was in. Her eyes were already tearing up just mentioning it. That hurt me. I had no response. I was so blindsided by her words and her pain. I cared. I cared even though the way I quickly wrapped up the transaction might say otherwise. I cared even though I couldn’t say anything to console her.

I care about customers. I’d say every one of my coworkers cares. But we also don’t care. Like, yeah, that woman broke my heart but part of me was also thinking, “I didn’t know this 17 year old and I don’t know you. People die every day. Why did you taint my whole day with this negativity?” I didn’t care about this stranger’s pain almost as much as I did care about it.

I like to think I’m a loving and compassionate person but at the same time, working in retail there’s this weird limbo you live in where you do care about customers as people and also you hate them a little bit.

I don’t care that your last pair of headphones broke five minutes after buying them. I don’t care that you really don’t like this one particular author. And while I don’t mean to be callous, I don’t care that it’s the anniversary of a death in the family, or divorce, or literally any other depressing life event. If it’s clearly busy in the store and you want to sit around discussing book reviews with me, I’m gonna walk away as fast as possible. If the store is not busy and you want to sit around discussing book reviews then I will be happy to do that with you. It’s a little different than just small talk because it’s about actually seeing the customer as a human person and not just part of your pay check.

Whether or not I care about you as a customer is really dependent on how the rest of the store is holding up. If there’s a line, I don’t care. I need to keep everyone moving along and whether you seem like a great person I’d like to be friends with or not, I don’t care about you or anything you have to say. I care about the money you’re spending and that’s about it. But if the store is fine then I can take a moment to see you as a real person who has their own lives, hopes, and dreams. Just like me.

 

 

 

 

Currently Reading: Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw (I’m less than 200 pages from the end, it’s a bit longer than I remembered)

Like It or Not, You Are Your Pet’s Parent

I do not call myself my cat’s ‘mom’ or ‘furmom’ as some these days identify. I don’t consider my pet a person or anything like that. I did not birth this animal. I did not adopt through a process that would require me to make sure my entire life and home will be tailored specifically to the care of this animal (I don’t know the entire adoption process for children but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s a lot more intensive than getting a cat).

But I am still my cat’s parent.

“What?” You might ask. “How can you say you’re not a pet parent yet say you are a pet parent?”

What does a parent do for their child? They love, feed, teach, admonish, and encourage. They make sure they’re eating properly, they take them to the doctor when they’re sick, they correct negative behavior, and when the child is young or nonverbal, they have to be in tune with every aspect of the child’s life to keep them healthy. Parents have to use tough love sometimes in order to keep their child safe, they have to get good care for the kid when they can’t take care of them for a time. There’s a lot more but I’ll stop there.

What does a pet owner do for their pet? They love, feed, teach, correct, and encourage. They make sure they’re eating properly, they take them to the vet when they’re sick, they have to use tough love sometimes in order to keep them safe. They have to find good care when they can’t take care of them for a time. They have to be in tune with every aspect of the pet’s life to keep them healthy.

See some similarities? The difference being that most children grow up and are able to tell parents what’s going on. My cat can’t tell me how her day was like a teenager can. An animal is voiceless. They cannot tell you where they are hurt, they cannot tell you why they’re acting out, they can’t point out their abuser, they can’t talk out their stress, etc. The only one who can speak for your pet is you. You have to know your pet. You have to understand what their actions mean. You have to tell the vet what’s been going on in their life. You have to make judgments based on what is best for them without knowing if they like those choices or not.

There’s a cheesy quote out there about how your pet may be only one part of your world but you are your pet’s entire world. It’s usually painted over a picture of an adorable puppy or kitten to tug at your heart strings. Despite the emotional ploy to get you to share/like, this quote is true. My cat knows nothing beyond me and my family. She doesn’t have connections outside this house. She can’t choose to leave. She didn’t come here because she wanted to. This is the only world she knows. How can I willingly choose to hurt or abandon her? She can’t call the police on me, she can’t talk to friends about the care she’s receiving. And why would she? I feed her and love her and she seems happy with that. I know she’s happy because I pay attention to her. I spend time with her. Animals have relationships with their owners just as people have relationships with each other.

Committing to care for the life another living creature is a big thing. It’s not something that you should ever choose on a whim. A cat is a 12 to 18 year commitment and a dog is similar depending on the breed. That is literally like having a child. If you’re not ready to take care of an animal for the rest of its life, don’t get one.

If I am no longer able to care for my cat then it is my responsibility to make sure she is still cared for. If I knew I wouldn’t be able to take care of her for more than the next few months and I spent that time deliberating over whether or not to take her to a shelter, she wouldn’t know. I can prepare myself for that day. I can make myself feel better about the decision. I can say goodbye. She can’t. I am her whole world and when I walk into that shelter all she knows is that it’s a new, loud, scary place with people she doesn’t know and strange animal smells everywhere. She would look to me for security and safety in this new place but suddenly I’m not there. (I understand that circumstances change but at the same time I feel like it can be an excuse to drop animals off at shelters. Find a new home yourself, where you can keep in touch with the new owners to make sure the animal is well cared for.)

Do you remember when you were six and lost sight of your parent in the grocery store? Can you recall that moment of total panic while a million horrible scenarios ran through your mind? Multiply that by ten and perhaps you will feel what an animal feels when suddenly the person who was supposed to be there, the ONLY person they have known for most of their life, leaves them with no explanation.

I am not against people finding new homes for pets they can absolutely no longer care for. But I think that people should be more responsible in the first place. An animal is a commitment, not a fling.  It’s a long term relationship. It’s not having a child, but it’s like having a child. You are responsible for that animal. Whether you like it or not, you are that pet’s parent, their only voice in this world. Act like it.

Maybe Got Scammed, Maybe Don’t Care

He came up to me and my sister at the mall (almost walked past us), said he was stranded, trying to get to some town an hour and a half away. Had his wife and two-year-old in the car. Said he tried to use his military ID at Sears to get some kind of discount. No cash. Ten or twelve dollars would probably get them home.

I don’t really believe his story. He has literally EVERY emotional trigger you could have in a story, veteran, father, husband, stranger far from home, stranded. Part of me wants to believe him. I want to help a person in need. So I gave him five bucks.

A nice, older gentleman came up to us after the other guy walked away, “Did he ask you for money? He had just asked me.”

“Yeah, I gave him five bucks.”

“Seemed like he was looking for something else, like a fix. Did you see how he was sweating.”

I shrug. “Five bucks is no skin off my nose.”

We walk away.

I realize, I don’t really care if I gave five dollars to a drug addict. I don’t care if I gave five dollars to a devoted husband just trying to get his family home. I don’t care. Because if I care then I have to analyze and figure out if he was telling the truth or not. I have to justify my actions to myself. I have to make myself believe I did the right thing. But you don’t have to do any of that if you just don’t care about the whole situation.

I was going to say no. Was gonna tell him to move along, especially when he brought up the two-year-old kid in the car. Like, dude. You already had me, I’m grabbing some ones, less is more. But I didn’t. It’s that part of me that wanted to believe him. I’ve been solicited for money before and I’ve said no before. I’m not irresponsible. But I’ve heard far too may stories of people at their lowest, just absolute rock bottom, who were helped by begging ten bucks off a stranger and that ten bucks saved their life. I don’t think I saved any lives. Then again, maybe I did. I’ll never know.

But I’m totally okay with that.

Honestly, I’m a very cynical person. The world is bleak. The economy sucks, my job prospects suck, the presidential candidates suck, environmentally we’re in shambles, the world is infected with war, poverty, hunger; I don’t need more reasons to distrust humanity. Humans are, on the whole, vile. So when a person appearing in need comes up to me and says all he needs is a few bucks to make his life a little better, I figure I can spare some change. Even though I don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth, I don’t care. I need to give him the five dollars probably more than he needs it.

So in the end, I gave an untrustworthy person a few dollars because I selfishly need to think that it’s possible he used that money for something good. I acknowledge that it’s also possible he used it for something bad. But I choose not to care either way. I’ll never know and I’ll not dwell on it beyond this. God didn’t call me to be kind only when I’m absolutely sure that everything is going to go perfectly well. He called me to show love and that gets harder and harder every day. Like I said, I don’t do this every day, I don’t hand out money to every person who asks. I research charities before I give, I spend carefully, I try to give material possessions to ensure things will be used and not money spent irresponsibly. But then occasionally times come when you must act and don’t have time to deeply consider (Note: in these times, be responsible with your money. If the guy had asked for twenty, I would have said no without thinking. He asked for a small amount that isn’t going to affect me in the long run).

The more I think about it, the more selfish I become. I did it for myself, not him. I can’t let my only glimmer of kindness toward humanity flicker into darkness just because someone MIGHT not be legitimately in need right this moment. Just because there are people out there who don’t need the money doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who do need it. I can’t let the scammers and drug addicts take away my ability to give. They’ll know we are Christians by our love. And if that love is giving a guy five dollars in the mall because he needs it more than I do, then so be it.