Bah humbug.  Yeah it’s Christmas and I just put a nice 19lb ham in the oven and it’ll be ready in about five hours. Wife took the kids to visit great grandma and grandma and her friends while I’m home taking care of dinner.  And I’m sick, been for the last few days, rather miserable, feeling a little better today, but not much…

I miss my Mom, I really miss her around the holidays like now, I’ve got nobody at all left. Yes I have wife and kids but that’s it. Nobody else.

Anyway, I feel like ranting a bit. I’m so tired of people judging me and really just judging anything and anyone without actually hearing the whole story or both sides of it.

I really don’t think it’s fair to judge someone or something without knowing everything, but sadly on the internet if it’s posted it must be true! People don’t wait to hear both sides they make judgment and that’s how we live now it seems.

We have a friend of the family, wife’s friend really, but she thought I was asshole, and she pretty much told me so. I’ll be honest, I didn’t like her either and I dreaded her coming over because I couldn’t stand being judged by her when she really didn’t know what the hell she was talking about or what was really going on. She only knew one side of the story.

I’ve noticed when people tell about things that happen to them or involve them they only tell what pertains to them and leave out a lot, especially the parts that would make them look bad. They only tell you enough so you can form your own opinion and of course be on their side.

Recently I had to chance to actually talk on the phone to this woman, we spoke for a long while actually, and finally after years I got to actually tell things from my side.

You know what happened, she apologized to me! She admitted she was wrong in how she treated me and how she thought of me. She admitted she should have waited and heard both sides of the story before making any judgments.

She said she didn’t know any of that because no one ever told her. They only told her half the story and she made her judgment without hearing the whole story.

The thing that bugs me though is she never asked me, she made her judgment and that was that, end of story your say. On the phone I was mad, I didn’t want to talk to her I had actually say ‘hey look, this is how it really is…’. In the end I’m not so mad anymore about the whole situation, so it was a productive talk. Views have changed and that’s a good thing.

Another example is that I was working in this restaurant, high end place, but I worked hard and the owners thought I was this goof off, good for nothing who didn’t do much. In reality I was doing the work of several people, I was handling entire catering parties by myself, I’m talking 400+ people but my boss, the Executive Chef never passed this information along to the owners. I was also blamed for all kinds of problems, even on days I was off, I wasn’t even there but yet I was blamed. I know this is true, I know he was taking credit for my work and blaming me for things he and others screwed up.

He wasn’t there for whatever reason one day and the owner came down to check on the status of a catering party. She never once thought to come see me, she asked someone else and they told he to come see me. She came over and asked about the party, apparently she had thought I was just packing it up or something and she was asked who was responsible for it. I told her ‘I am. did it all myself, it’s all ready to go.’  She was shocked, speechless actually, I thought she was going to fall over, she just couldn’t believe I did it all myself. I told her I’ve been doing these for over a year now by myself, and she was shocked again and amazed and she didn’t know anything at all about it. Everyone else took credit for my work, and apparently she thought I didn’t do much else other than work lunch and do some prep work and make a lot of mistakes. I was shocked myself that she didn’t know what I did there. I was more shocked to find everyone else was taking credit for my work and blaming me for mistakes that happened when I wasn’t even there. I should have realized at that point I was going to last there, it turns out I was right and the Executive Chef was a huge asshole all along who pretended to my friend to just use me and take credit for the things I did. One day I had enough and I walked out, and damn did it feel good.

Most the time in life though, you never get the chance to tell your side of the story and you’re judged by what others say about you even they’ve never talked to you about any of the things they heard.

It’s sad that we live in a society like this, but it’s not going to change unless people realize what they’re doing and change it. I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.

Everyone complains about wanting to be treated fairly in life and everything they do but they don’t treat other people fairly. How can you expect people to treat you fairly when you don’t treat other people fairly? That just doesn’t work. You can’t have it both ways.

To me it makes no sense.

I try my hardest to not make any judgments until I know everything.

Yes, I’m human, we all make mistakes and yes I’ve jumped to conclusions, but eventually I realized what I was doing and tried to find out the whole story so I could make an informed judgment.

No one seems to do that. They go with what they know and the hell with everything else, they’re right, you’re wrong, no matter what.

It’s ‘you’re an asshole’ ‘ you’re a bad person’ ‘you’re this or that’ and it’s all because so and so said so and that’s it. They think these things but don’t know the whole story. They form their opinions and spread them without ever knowing the truth and everything involved. Essentially they have half of the story and that doesn’t work.

Would you read half of a book and then form your opinion of it without ever finishing it?  No you wouldn’t because you just don’t know how the story really ends or how it actually played out.

Yet, that’s what people do, they know half the story, form their opinion and that’s the end of it.

I don’t get it.

I go through life now not caring what people think of me.

I don’t care what your opinion is of me because you really don’t know me.

You only know half the story, if that really, you only know parts of the whole and you formed an opinion, an uninformed opinion in reality and that’s sad.

It’s not sad for me, but it’s sad because if you’ve done it to me, that means you’ve done it to many other people as well.

..whatever…