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Saturday, 12 May 2007
A fine line...
Posted @ 00:30
There is only a fine line separating right and wrong, good and bad...
Is it possible to create more problem for a person by helping him/her out? The answer is a big YES. It's quite difficult to explain what happened, as regular readers would realise that I often anonymise names and events in order to 'safeguard privacy' (or the more cynical explanation of not getting me into trouble, haha). Anyway, the essence of the story was that a certain A needed some help with a piece of work, this involved contacting B, who independently noticed A had a problem. The next day, I found out that A 'semi-backstabbed'(*) A, which gave A a lot more hassle. Although it is perfectly legitimate for B to do this, I thought the whole point of contacting B is that this would allow A to solve the problem with minimum hassle, not to remind him to 'semi-backstab'...
Oh well, problem was solved eventually, but I felt rather bad. Did I indirectly caused A more trouble by trying to help him, or would B have done it on his own anyway? Thesedays, I often find myself trying to help people too much, and I admit that I am treading on the boundary separating 'helpful' to 'put a foot in other people's business'. I just couldn't help it...
(*) I should explain what I meant by 'semi-backstab'. This was an action that was perfectly legitimate for B to carry out, probably within his duty to. However, it is also legitimate for him to not do the backstabbing, and he would not have done anything wrong either.
Is it possible to create more problem for a person by helping him/her out? The answer is a big YES. It's quite difficult to explain what happened, as regular readers would realise that I often anonymise names and events in order to 'safeguard privacy' (or the more cynical explanation of not getting me into trouble, haha). Anyway, the essence of the story was that a certain A needed some help with a piece of work, this involved contacting B, who independently noticed A had a problem. The next day, I found out that A 'semi-backstabbed'(*) A, which gave A a lot more hassle. Although it is perfectly legitimate for B to do this, I thought the whole point of contacting B is that this would allow A to solve the problem with minimum hassle, not to remind him to 'semi-backstab'...
Oh well, problem was solved eventually, but I felt rather bad. Did I indirectly caused A more trouble by trying to help him, or would B have done it on his own anyway? Thesedays, I often find myself trying to help people too much, and I admit that I am treading on the boundary separating 'helpful' to 'put a foot in other people's business'. I just couldn't help it...
(*) I should explain what I meant by 'semi-backstab'. This was an action that was perfectly legitimate for B to carry out, probably within his duty to. However, it is also legitimate for him to not do the backstabbing, and he would not have done anything wrong either.
Labels: journal
By the way...
This is only a personal website, it is not supposed to (and impossible to) cater for all tastes. Whilst the mood of the entries vary from "serious" to "random", please forgive me for the liberal use of "cynicism" and "sarcasm". If an entry isn't your cup of tea, just skip it... [Yes, this is a disclaimer!]
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# posted by Alastair : 2:30 PM
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