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Although you may find this hard to believe, this entry is not actually intended as a comment on either of the previous two entries (though I admit that I think something like it could perhaps be applied to the situations described in those entries); no, this is just something that occurred to me the other day that I've been meaning to post:

If you find yourself commenting frequently that the whole world treats you in some particular way, it's often worth taking an introspective moment to see whether your attitudes, actions, or approaches might have anything to do with the way you're treated.

I emphatically do not mean to blame the victim here; the above statement can be taken much too far, applied much too broadly, and often is. But I also find that when I observe a pattern of people treating me differently from how they treat others (in either a positive or a negative way), there's often some connection to a way that I behave. Not always direct cause-and-effect, and I'm not saying that I bear full responsibility for how others treat me, but there often does seem to be some correlation.

Even my customer service demon stems partly, no doubt, from the fact that I speak too quietly, especially in noisy restaurants. That doesn't come close to explaining the entire phenomenon, but it does help explain the times when I've received something other than what I've ordered. Which has happened a lot less often in recent years, as I've started making an effort to state my orders clearly and loudly, and to have them repeated back if I have any doubts about whether they were recorded accurately.