people approach issues in interactions, either solely on the basis of the incident’s transpiring events or they mush that with the related or unrelated, out of context factors, to make an interaction a lot more complex than it is.
some people attempt to act clever or so they think, by trying to create a mischief, others do have implicit or explicit desire to humiliate or annoy their targets, some have a habit or personality that their demeanor is arrogant, recluse, ignorant or plain tasteless - no courtesy, no genuine consideration or common human decency.
and then people try to cover their follies, their stupid remarks, their unintentional messes of having ‘mis-attributed’ something hurtful to someone who thinks that it did not sit well with them.
an instance: an older man comes out of his work. and the security officer at the door, half his age, says ‘lets see what you are stealing from here tonite’, while ‘doing his job’ and he is of a different race than the older man.
how should the older man respond?
his reactivity gets the better of him and he says, “young man, watch it. you and your whole race is a thief. do not utter such words as you did and do not dare speak to me like this.”
how justified is his reaction?
should he give the benefit of doubt to the young man, that he was being humorous?
what happens to cultural sensitivity in these kind of situations?
will he react angrily or should he react angrily because he duly feels that a younger person, knowing very well that the older person is credible and his senior colleague, must not have anything to hide or take out of the work place, and yet he still phrased his query in a manner that hurts the self respect of the older man - how such situations cause a distance age wise, among colleagues as well as can lead to embittered or escalated resentment or hostility?
when does the pride leaves and reason ought to take over, such scenarios among people?
are factors outside of the incident going to complicate the actual argument of the instance, given above?