Are you tolerant of small mistakes?

66Mustang

I’m talking about little mistakes, not a surgeon getting an operation wrong!!!

Today I was driving through my town centre and there was a parked van on our side of the road so me and a car in front had to wait until there was nothing coming the other way to go around it.

The car in front of me seemingly couldn’t see so slowly pulled out to pass the van however another car was in fact coming, so they had to reverse back. The driver of the other car was visibly angry at the first driver - gesturing, staring, mouthing at them and shaking his head.

I can’t understand how something so insignificant can make people so annoyed?

I don’t know why the incident upset me because it didn’t even involve me, I think just because it proves there are unreasonable people knocking about and I’m scared that one day I’ll be the one making a mistake and I’ll come across one of these people.

leeCal

Easily done @66Mustang. I crossed lanes in very very slow moving traffic in a van once and suddenly there’s a motorcyclist banging on my passenger window with his fist! He even tried to open the door! I locked the doors and warned him of what would happen to him if I had to get out of my van, no idea if he heard me or not, he banged on the side once more and then drove off, I imagine I crossed lanes slowly in front of him as he was winding his way down the middle of the two lanes of vehicles. I looked before I crossed but vans are not great for seeing out of.

Sometimes small mistakes are more annoying than big ones in my experience, I think it’s because they are avoidable whereas big mistakes are sometimes just par for the course, don’t know, when I was young things would annoy me. One thing my children would habitually do was use the same knife to spread butter as to spread the topping, that meant that topping ended up in the butter along with bread or toast crumbs etc. Now it wouldn’t bother me so much but then it did as I didn’t want someone else’s topping on my bread! Sounds trivial now of course.

Sandy_123

Oh I had embarrassing time once, was wheeling the trolly around a smallish shop. When it bumped into a a display that was on a cardboard shelf. All came tumbling down. Stock everywhere, I saw the staff walk away from just setting it up, to make it worse. I was like  it's OK I'll do it, they were like erm no.

Sandy_123

Was totally embarrassed lol, was in a hospital too

66Mustang

I agree totally about the road rage. When some people are in their cars they get extremely aggressive.

Maybe it’s like the internet where people think they can do what they like from a position of relative safety. A bit like the saying where if you give someone anonymity they will reveal their true self?

@Biblioklept I agree about the horn usage. If someone pulls out in front of you, so what? You have brakes, use them. But no, the majority will use the horn aggressively.

All that said, just to balance things out, I’ve found most drivers, if you don’t make mistakes, are pretty decent. They are very intolerant of mistakes yes but if you don’t make mistakes they will be pretty civil and let you out of junctions etc. just a shame about the intolerance.

L_Volunteer

I think it depends on how we are defining small mistakes! What's a small mistake to someone will a big mistake to someone else 

66Mustang

@L_Volunteer

That’s a good point. But, I guess in that case, my instinct would be to ask someone who thought something trivial was a big mistake, why is it a big mistake?

Using my example in the original post. The angry driver of the other car obviously thought the first driver made a big mistake by trying to pass the van. I would want to ask them why is that such a big mistake?

L_Volunteer

Asking questions and trying to understand other people's viewpoints is really key @66Mustang. Well done for raising this point 

Cartini

66Mustang said:

@L_Volunteer

That’s a good point. But, I guess in that case, my instinct would be to ask someone who thought something trivial was a big mistake, why is it a big mistake?

Using my example in the original post. The angry driver of the other car obviously thought the first driver made a big mistake by trying to pass the van. I would want to ask them why is that such a big mistake?

England is full of drivers like that, more so Plymouth where I live (the standard of driving here is atrocious); I`ve even seen driving instructors not adhering to the Highway Code (entering yellow boxes when exit wasn`t clear, going through amber when nothing behind his / her car).

In the example you gave, the car trying to pass the van, in my mind, did the correct thing by moving slowly to pull past the van then reversed back when he saw the oncoming car.

The oncoming car was probably driven by somebody akin to the character Billy Connolly refers to as a tattooed <something>.

Unfortunately drivers like him, and attitudes like his, are only going to increase with the never ending flow of vehicles on the road. 

As for your heading about tolerance towards mistakes; it depends on the situation.

I work in a 7 man team in IT; a small mistake could bring business operations to a standstill.  In that situation no, I`m not tolerant.  If someone makes a small mistake (i.e. rebooting the wrong server) thus making himself look a fool then yes, I`m tolerant (and I would take great pleasure taking the mickey out of him (as would the rest of the team)).

Tori_Scope

I think that's something a lot of people find @Biblioklept. Is it something you're trying to work on? 

Tori_Scope

There's usually room to change I find @Biblioklept, even if it's hard, and takes a while. 

Something I find useful is to challenge my inner monologue, which can be quite negative. So if I have an automatic thought of 'I'm so useless, why did I even bother' after making a mistake, for example, I try to stop the thought, question whether that's actually true, and reframe it.

Karen7788

None of us are perfect and we all make mistakes, it’s human nature. Mistakes are there so that we can learn by them and life itself is just one big learning curve. 

L_Volunteer

Very good point you have raised @Karen7788