Treating People With Respect- The World is Round (Survival Guide Pre-Financial Independence)

It always never fail to amaze me by how nasty some people can be when dealing with other people in the service line. These group of people have the notion that the old adage of "customer is king" gave them a superior right to be rude and to ill-treat others servicing them. Hence they are entitled to verbally abuse service staff serving them and make them feel like clowns. Such obnoxious behavior can also happen within the same company by a supervisor or senior manager against their own staff under them. The mentality here is that since they are paying their staff salary and decides the performance bonus via the interim/year end appraisals, their staff under them should subject themselves to their every whims and fancy. According people with basic dignity thus never cross the mind of these group of obnoxious folks. 

I always believe that the world is round and also the principle of karma. Economic conditions changes and there will be ups and downs for all companies along with the economic cycle. For some of the nasty clients that I known of, I have seen some of them being retrenched by their own company and ended up taking up jobs offered by the servicing vendor companies that used to serve them. Some of them thus ended up having to serve other people and faced the indignity of obnoxious behavior and the difference is that they themselves are now at the receiving end. 

For the other group of senior managers bullying their own staff, I have seen some of them being retrenched as their salaries are too high and their reputation inside the organisation are notorious enough for them to be listed on the "to go" list once the economic situation worsen and cost rationalization exercise has to be undertaken. It is thus no surprise that the staff that used to be under them actually rejoice and make no pretext to hide their celebratory mood. I have also known of instances whereby some of these long suffering staff making sneering remarks when they happen to bump into their ex-head of department outside work.

Some of the aforesaid factors are why people crave for financial independence. Unfortunately, some of these unpleasant situations cannot be avoided for most salaried workers. Adapting to the challenges in life thrown at us daily from clients and the manager from hell is thus key to survival while striving to save and invest as much as possible. Changes is the only constant in life. There will always be up and down. Also, in every crisis, there is always an opportunity. One can also always choose to exit in such unpleasant circumstances or alternatively, choose to outlast the evil doer (as Karma tend to catch up eventually).