Fighting my (Negative) Nature

Today I was fairly (no, extremely) angry and frustrated when I arrived to pick up my daily allotment of newspapers to deliver to find that there were 4 complaints about not receiving a newspaper on Saturday morning, and 2 of those complaints were canceling their subscription due to my "poor service".

Yes, I did not get papers to several people on Saturday morning, due to weather conditions in which I literally could NOT get to those people's houses to deliver their papers. Other than (highly) inclement weather, I have ALWAYS delivered these people their newspapers. So 100+ delivered papers and about 3-4 undelivered papers (which were always brought by the next day, by the way), and suddenly that constitutes poor service.

I was pretty angry all day, thinking of long letters I would like to leave in those people's newspapers boxes, explaining in great detail why they are colossal jerks.

Then it hit me.

These people, having received good service the vast majority of the time, decided to focus on the few times that they felt they did not receive good service.

Similarly, I, having received good treatment from the vast majority of my customers, decided to focus on the few ones who treated me poorly.

So then I got to thinking, why IS it that we tend to focus so much more on the bad things that happen than on the vast majority of GOOD (or at least neutral) things? I believe the answer is that we are biologically inclined to pay special attention to bad things. From a survival standpoint, this completely makes sense. Those people that would have been inclined towards paying attention to bad things (like a small amount of poisonous berries in a large patch of good berries) would survive at a higher rate than those who gave equal attention to both good and bad.

So, I'm no longer upset. I'm just a descendent of survivors, just like those disgruntled newspaper subscribers.

Extreme Rural Newspaper Delivery Driving (Part 1?)

So back in December I got a job at the local newspaper delivering newspapers throughout the upper Kittitas County area. Mostly in Cle Elum and the surrounding areas, but as far North as Easton, WA.

I've also been here,
although this is the first
time I've noticed how much
this sign resembles a
certain male appendage.

I've been here minus the moose.

In case you aren't familiar with where Cle Elum is, I'll provide a point of reference: it's about 2 miles from Roslyn, Washington, where the TV show Northern Exposure was filmed. In case you're unfamiliar with Northern Exposure, it's a TV show about living in a small town in Alaska. This should provide a hint as to the typical weather conditions in this lovely part of the country. This can (and sometimes does) make for some interesting driving on bad weather days, especially driving around in a 1981 Ford Escort. This has made me into a super-pro winter-weather driver, which I will discuss in more detail in a
                                                           future blog entry.

Over the next few days (weeks? months?) I will summarize a few of the more interesting aspects of this paper delivery route.