I was outside having a cigarette and got to talking with one of the guys fixing up our new offices.

A thoroughly friendly guy, his name was Gordon, we started discussing how angry some woman had got with Gordon’s colleague because he’d parked behind her in the car park. Our car park sucks; people will get blocked in, it’s unavoidable, so we thought it was a little unnecessary to be shitty about it.

He told me a story about this job he did once where he had to clean up after this gig at 2 in the morning. For some reason I forget there were dirty hand prints all over the walls. So he cleaned them all up, did a good job and left.

350 miles driving later, at eight am, he was home.

He got a phone call about eleven, the guy was irate - what kind of sub standard job had Gordon done? Apparently there was a single dirty hand print on the wall outside the board room. Gordon apologised, he’d obviously missed this single hand print. The customer didn’t care and insisted he come back and clean it up. Gordon pointed out that he was now 350 miles away, so he asked the customer nicely if he would clean it up, it would take a few seconds with a cloth from the kitchen.

The customer persisted that he should come back and finish the job.

So Gordon did go back. All 350 miles back. When he got there the customer was much more calm, he asked Gordon if he really had driven 350 miles to get back there. Gordon said that he had, and that he’d missed out on about 500 pounds work. The customer was obviously abashed. He confided in Gordon that his wife was dying, and that it’d just been a terrible morning. He’d taken out his anger and distress on Gordon, and he regretted it now. He said he had some more work Gordon could do. In the end Gordon got about a grand for the work he did that day.

I took two morals from this story. Give people the benefit of the doubt, they are probably angry or upset for a good reason. Secondly, if you do the right thing, overall you benefit in the long run. For being a good person, and because good things come to those who treat people with kindness and consideration. Don’t get angry back, it doesn’t help.