I work for a painting and construction company so there are
always new employees coming and going.
One day, a new employee came to a job and introduced himself. He seemed nice and was a pretty big guy, so I
expected that he would be a good worker.
As the work day went on, he was working at a crawling pace. He was doing half as much work as everyone
else, so I told my boss about him. I
thought that because of the lack of effort he was putting in, he was a bad
worker. My boss ended up confronting him
about it and he was only working so slowly because he had broken his rib a few
days before while on vacation. This
caused a conflict between him and I that had to be taken care of. An attribution that has helped me is when my
girlfriend gets cranky; I know that she is bored. I will usually take her out to dinner or plan
something fun and this solves the problem.
She just needs to get out of the house and relieve stress.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteI get what you're saying, it is difficult not to make judgement or assumptions about people when we are trying to figure them out. I feel like stereotyping can be included in attribution theory as it is giving reason to the way a person is which could or could not be correct. I'm sure most of us are so use to doing it that we hardly realize it when it is happening. I guess it is all a learning process in figuring out how much we can justify using attribution theory versus how much we are harming our relationships. It's just an interesting process. Well, thanks for posting. - Kenzie Marie
Your story is a really good example of how making assumptions can create sticky situations. It's unfortunate that the guy did not explain from the beginning that he hurt his rib because it would have saved the trouble for you and your boss. However, I can definitely understand why you would assume that he lacked the interest in his job for working so slow. It's hard for us to really understand people's emotions or behaviors unless we are very familiar with them. Since he was a newer employee it would make it very difficult to gauge his behavior in an appropriate manner. Nice example!
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