I’m temping today. Temping is fun because I get to observe the office activities, while remaining detached. This morning a drama was unfolding. I think we can learn something from it.

One of the upper managers bursts into the office this morning, in a very bad mood. He starts ranting to his co-workers about an incident at the gym this morning. Apparently, he took up a little more than one parking space, crowding into another space. He was sleepy when he parked so it was not his fault, he says. When he came out of the gym, there was a note left on his car; its author threatened to damage the car if it ever took up more than one space again. The manager was furious, “How dare he! Everyone makes mistakes!” He had a plan though. The note was written on the back of an invoice for a fancy car dealership here in San Francisco. Although the author was careful to remove his name and address, he left the bar-code. The office manager knows someone who works at this particular dealership. He spent the morning plotting to find the identity of the person who wrote the note so he could contact them and tell them he knows who they are.

As we can see, pettiness begets pettiness, stooping ever lower. Someone allowed a poorly parked car to ruin their day. In retaliation, they attempted to ruin the day of the car’s owner. The car’s owner not only allowed his day to be ruined, but plotted further retaliation. I can only imagine that this nonsense will continue to spiral to ever more ridiculous depths.

Last night Laura and I watched Earth, a film about the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were locked in a cycle of revenge that led to former friends and neighbors killing each other. While this morning’s antics were mostly just silly, revenge can have disastrous consequences when it escalates.

Haven’t we all felt like this? We are feeling bad so we want others to feel bad as well, preferably whomever we decide is the source of our bad feelings.

How might this situation been handled differently? The note’s author could have shrugged off the bad parking job and been on his way. The manager could have laughed off the note instead of letting it make him as angry as whoever wrote it. The friend at the dealership could refuse to participate in the manager’s childish vendetta.

If we can’t let tiny things like these go in our personal lives, why do we expect our leaders to behave any differently? We are quick to criticize politicians’ petty feuds and military retaliation, but too often we display the same behavior ourselves. No one can make you angry, you choose to become angry. Once angry, you can choose to lash out at the world and try to spread your negativity. How can we expect anyone, including the government, not to engage in vengeful actions if we do ourselves?