Respect

One of the definitions of respect in the dictionary is as follows:

"esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment."

I consider respect to be that of what the definition says along with a few more aspects. 

We try to teach our children to respect others, especially elders.  Somewhere adults tend to have difficulty in understanding that respect not only is that a child will listen to you, but that if you just love them, the respect is automatically there.  You become a role model for that child.

I am always amazed how adults tend to want a level of respect from everyone around them, but sometimes forget to respect those that they are speaking with, living with, or working with. 

Respect to me is the crucial point of listening to those around you, understanding their point of view, and not talking down to people.  Why do we treat our family and close friends one way, only to turn around treat others differently?

This is all stemming from a few weeks of ignorance, poor customer service and just the plain lack of respect that I have encountered around me. 

Our air conditioning needed to be worked on, the guy that showed up was just a bit scary to say the least.  At one point, Jeff walked into the garage to find the man sweeping up glass Christmas ornaments.  The box had "accidentally" fallen down the attic stairs, breaking all of them.

It then took us over 3 weeks and two missed appointments to finally get someone out to repair our solar hot water heater.  Then to have the gentleman tell me the part is only $9 and we could have fixed it ourselves.  "Umm, excuse me?  That would require ME to get on the roof."  Yeah, not happening.

Then last week, our cable stopped working.  Repair guy needs to go to the attic, guess what we found?  Yeah, boxes (and I'm talking rubbermaid) of Christmas decorations crushed and all of the ornaments ruined.  I am dumb founded as to what the heck the air conditioning guy had been doing in our attic. 

Add in a few other things here and there and you can understand my frustration. 

I try to teach Kyle to think before he speaks.  The past few days I have had to repeat that mantra in my head.  I just wish others would do the same.