There’s the back of Ivy. This sweater is the kind where you leave the final stitches on a holder till the end. I like that, because it makes a nicer joining of the pieces, but it means that you don’t block the separate pieces. So here Ivy is, top on the needles, bottom curling, sides rolling, a gray rectangle.
I think I mentioned the competitor who is opening a store like ours in the town we moved our store from. He had planned, according to our spies, to open in July for Back to School.
Teachers begin, depending on the school, anytime from Monday to August 20th, and Back to School is in full swing.
Our competitor is not open. He has not been able to find a manager. He lives in the next county from us. His new store is filled with boxes waiting to be unpacked and racks waiting to be filled, he has a want ad on his door and in the newspaper, and it doesn’t look as though he has any chance of opening in time to catch the shoppers. The Empress and I surmise that he, doubtless being as busy as we are at his main store in the next county, is having to drive up here and try to stock the store himself. We are hoping that he regrets his hostile action.
So last night, after a 12-hour work day, I dragged my exhausted self over to Partygirl’s house for a small neighborhood stroll. As we passed someone’s hedge of shrub roses, I told her about this situation with the competitor.
She was shocked. She told me not to gloat. She wouldn’t hear of my gloating, even when I pointed out that I wasn’t exactly ill-wishing him and that at one point I had been hoping that he would contract ringworm in addition to having his new store fail, but had given up that cruel thought. Even when I reminded her that I had done nothing to harm the guy and his problems were not my fault but his own. Even when I argued that I had never met the man, and was merely exulting in the abstract. She cut me off completely, and we spoke of something else.
Japanese beetles, I think, followed by the priesthood of the believer.
Is it never acceptable to gloat over someone else’s misfortune? Even if they deserve it? Even if their misfortune is your good fortune? Even if they never know that you are pleased about their suffering?
Maybe if you only say it in your xanga and not out loud?
With all due respect to Partygirl: You are allowed to be human, especially after a 12-hour workday.
Yes, you’re allowed to be human. Saying it on Xanga is worse than saying it out loud.
I think that you’re allowed to be relieved at someone else’ self-made ill fortune.
Exulting over some’s bad fortune should be reserved for someone who was actively trying to harm you IMHO.
For instance, at my last full-time job, the new woman, C, who was replacing my friend and co-worker, came to me and said that she knew I wasn’t able to lift heavy things, and she would do the stuff that was heavy work. My previous co-worker, L, did the same thing. I told both of them that wasn’t fair, but L said that there was some work that she hated, and since I didn’t mind doing it, she considered it a fair trade. C, however, didn’t like the same work that L didn’t like, but felt that it was her right not to have to do it, and that I should do it. She also told everybody in the place that I was refusing to do the heavy work, and how unfair it was.
C also did things like sitting in the production manager’s lap and hugging him at the Christmas party. L and I felt that it was, after all, a Christmas party. I, personally felt it was a bit much to do this during a business meeting, though.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, and culminated in me getting an ultimatum that I do some very heavy work that was way beyond my physical capacity or be fired. I tried, and wound up with injuries, bleeding internally, and very sick. It ultimately ended up with me being fired.
Things never went bad for her that I knew of, but if they had, I would have felt justified in being happy at her misfortune.
In one way, I feel sorry for her. She’s getting by on being young and pretty, but she won’t be young forever, and I once saw her after a weekend where she had slacked off from her workouts. She weighed 15 pounds more on Monday than she did on Friday when she left work.
The universe is going to get her back for her behavior.
And it won’t make me sad.
Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it gloating if you’re merely noticing the challenges he is facing and pointing out that in fact you had moved from that spot and didn’t he bother to even consider why before he put a store in nearly the same location? I have gloated, I’m sure, on occasion. And I think it’s probably not very nice, but after all, I am human and in the privacy of my own brain I don’t think it’s particularly harmful. Unless I start to obsess about it. That would be another story entirely.
No, it’s pretty much always bad to gloat in someone elses misfortune.
Rejoice in your good fortune, but don’t be mean to those poor sods who can’t get their stuff together.
I may be one of those poor sods one day.
Rather than thinking of it as ‘gloating’ think of it as commenting on the fact that there is justice in the world after all. Or you can think of it as commenting on your competitor’s business sense – or lack of.