Guilty

I had a little altercation with one of the cooks this week at my parent restaurant. Let me set it up for you.

The cook is in charged of all that is fried and grilled and one of the item that was to be served was an imperial roll, those are fried rolls that some of our Caucasian friends mistakenly refer to as egg rolls. Anyway, the rolls were, that day, consistently overcooked. At which point I told the cook to PLEASE ensure the quality of the rolls. She responded by saying that it was not her fault and that the oil needed to be changed for the past couple of days etc... I abruptly interrupted her, by "shusshing" her, emphatically, may I add. What you have to understand, is that the lady was older than I am and in the Asian culture, a younger person giving his "emphatic" opinion to someone older is not well reguarded. At that point I couldn't care less, I just wanted the damn rolls.

So let's fast forward a little bit, to Friday. My mom, upon hearing the altercation asked me to give her an explanation of the situation. After listening to me, she asked me to go apologize to the lady about being curt. Honestly, I couldn't care less if I did or if I did not. So I did, or at least I thought I did.

Apologizing is not an easy thing for me to do. I don't like apologizing especially when I believe in the truthfulness of what I have done. However we have to ask ourselves a bigger question than "are we right or are we wrong?" Because being right and being wrong is just human rationalization, so we can swing both ways. The questions is more along the line of "what is the right thing to do?" See we should always strive to do the right thing, but too often we get stuck on just being right.

I hate being wrong, more importantly I hate when my nose is being rubbed in when I am wrong. There are 2 kinds of criticism we receive, the first one are just plain wrong and the second are just plain right ON. And it is never the criticism that are false that hurt the most,nope it is those damn right ON criticism that come in and pierce right through our heart, sould and mind, those are the one that are just.....well...right.

In the end I had to apologize. Not because I was wrong, as a matter of fact, I was right, the quality of the product was poor and completely unacceptable. No instead, I had to apologize because I did not give her the respect she deserved. We all need respect, we all asked to be respected, I do and I did not follow the golden rule: "Do unto others as I would have them do unto you"

I know it is easier said than done and many will crucify us for our wrong doings. But listen, those who criticize you are either your enemy or your friend and if they are your friends, you should take heed of their criticism. Listen-Learn and Grow.

And to those who have an easy way of pointing the faults of others, you should remember that a velvet glove is always better than a slap in the face. Sometime, just sometime, it is better to let the fire settle and than use a gentle blow to take out the rest.