Interpersonal conflicts are part and parcel of everyday
life. As long as we continue to live in a interconnected and interdependent
world, our actions or inactions will always have an impact on others. Sometimes,
the way we handle a situation without due consideration, albeit
unintentionally, may give rise to tensions or sore points in our personal
relationships with others. Thus, it is necessary to understand how to resolve
such interpersonal conflicts.
During the Chinese New Year festive season, something
happened to me which keep me wondering how I could have handled the situation
better. I was attending a Chinese New Year ‘Lou Hei’ dinner with many of our
friends. As I turned up late for the dinner, I had not paid the organizer the
money for the dinner yet and was thinking of doing it after the dinner, since
everyone is already enjoying his or her dinner.
In the middle of my second course, I was shocked to hear someone
yell my name, “ who is Tan Si Kai? Owe money pay money!” I quickly ran up to
make payment to the organizer but the damage had been done. Imagine how
embarrassing it is to have your name called out for all 114 people present at
the restaurant to hear, especially the way I was singled out. At the end of the
dinner, the person who yelled my name came over sheepishly to apologize to me
while I was talking with a group of people. He explained that he was just
helping the organizer to call out those people who had not paid. I was
not ready to react to what he had to say, but not wanting to spoil the festive
mode of the season and for him to take this incident to heart, I graciously
accepted his apology and joked that I thought he wanted to call me out to
perform and entertain the crowd.
Hence, from this incident, we can understand that sometimes,
we may end up on the receiving end of certain social missteps, and we have to
react in the best way possible in the heat of the moment. If given a chance to
react to the situation again, I think I might have given a few witty rejoinders
in response to him yelling out my name so as to turn an embarrassing scenario
for the both of us into a rather entertaining and comical act so as to dissolve
the tension. If you were in my shoes, how would you react? If you were the guy
who did not handle the situation in the best way possible, what would you do to
salvage the situation?
