THIS or THAT Episode 2: Crisp White Shirt

This year my theme for the #MyFriendAlexa campaign is “This or That”. Here, I’ll be putting up a day-to-day scenario that mostly all of us face sometime or the other, along with two different ways in which we can react towards those scenarios – either “This” or “That”. So, let’s look at today’s scenario!

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Sara is out with 6 of her other colleagues for a team lunch at a nearby restaurant. They are celebrating their recent success on a project. Everyone’s sharing their experience and clanking their glasses to toast everyone’s role in the assignment. The waiter comes over to serve the second round of starters. He bends over to serve Sara but he suddenly loses his balance, and the serving tongs go crashing in Sara’s lap, leaving a huge stain on the front of her crisp white shirt.

Let’s see the two possible reactions Sara could choose from:

THIS:

Sara sighs out loud with dramatic hand gestures, mouthing “oh gosh! couldn’t you see????? What’s wrong with you??” She continues in a furious tone, “Do you even know how much this shirt costs??? You lousy fellow! Stop staring at me and go get some towels now!” The poor waiter seems embarrassed and apologizes a 100 times and rushes to get Sara some napkins to clean up.

Sara stays in a grumpy temper as everyone keeps asking her at work about what happened to her shirt. The waiter was distracted at his job for the rest of the day as well.

THAT:

Sara exclaims, “Oh no! that was my new shirt”. She then notices the tensed waiter who has already uttered “Sorry ma’am” at least 10 times by then. She gets up and politely says, “It’s not a problem. Just be careful. Could you please get me a few tissues to clean up?” The waiter rushes to get her a few napkins.

The rest of the day, every time someone at work asks Sara about her shirt, she jokingly replies with, “oh! just a sign of a great lunch”. Hence laughing it off all day long.

The waiter too went on with his day at work being extra careful of his actions.

As obvious as the “right” choice sounds, it doesn’t always come naturally to all. But all that needs to be done is to just take a conscious pause and decide how you would want to react, rather than letting your subconscious react for you. Let me know which reaction do you usually end up choosing!

You may read other episodes here:

Episode 1: Late to the Party!

Episode 3: Road Rage

Episode 4: Out of Love or out of Fear?

I’m taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa!