Friday, June 25, 2010

Allow Us To Clarify

Shmily asks:

How come in all of the advice you post, you place all blame on the poster? Is it because you don't know the whole story? I ask because I find it hard to believe that every single person who's written in for advice bears the entire responsibility for what they've written about. Even if you have to play devil's advocate, maybe once in a while believe that the OP didn't do anything wrong (like the shy person in the office for instance - being excluded hurts).

First, I will freely admit that in several cases we've found the question asker mostly to blame for their problem. I don't believe that's been the case for all or even most of our submissions.

In general we have less patience for writers who speak with vitriol and hatred about a person, especially when the perceived slight turns out to be minor. If we think your attitude is wrong, we'll let you know, often in harsh terms.

It's always possible we don't have all the information, but we can only base our answers on what we're given. There have been situations where we've asked our writers to comment with additional information, and we do post follow-ups from writers in order to provide the most complete story and the most correct advice.

Finally, our motto is, "You can't control other people's actions, you can only control your reaction to them." In the case of the woman who felt left out at work, I completely agree that being excluded hurts, and I absolutely don't think she did anything wrong. My point, however, was that her coworkers do, otherwise she'd be part of the group. Replying with "Being excluded hurts. Your coworkers are mean for not including you," doesn't really help. Our advice is not meant to place blame, but to provide the writer with positive steps they can take to change their situation.
  
We hope this helps you to understand where we're coming from. As always, we welcome all comments and encourage our readers to agree, disagree, or let us know when we've missed something. 

1 comment:

  1. Your response told her she is shy, when she never said she was shy. In fact, she never said she did anything except her job and that they were speaking privately about something right in front of her. Instead of assuming she is shy, I would assume that it's an awkward situation and she just may not know if it would be rude to include herself in their conversation, or if it is presumptuous to do so. I guess in the end we don't know the coworkers intentions as to why they do not include her or acknowledge her birthday, but it's just wrong to assume that we DO know she is shy and she may have turned them down in the past.

    My point is that maybe we should acknowledge that the OP is actually being excluded and work from there, if we're going on what is actually being said in the letter.

    And also one of the blog authors ASSUMED that the person smelling the nice smelling stranger is standing away from them instead of realizing they may be standing very close, as do most commuters who take public transportation. It's just an observation you may not agree with, but it is important to be mindful that some advice does not seem to take the OP's issue seriously this way, and you're assuming points that the OP never wrote in their original letter. Thanks for the good read!!

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