Tales of a coffee-holic: We're all complainers

I complain too much.

I have a (hopefully) stable job that I actually enjoy, I have a roof over my head, albeit a very tiny section of roof and I have many people in my life that care about me. But I still feel the need to constantly complain about things that really aren’t that important.

I think complaining makes us all feel a little bit better about our own personal plight and helps us to vent frustrations about whatever is going wrong in our lives.

Complaints can be a good thing or a bad thing. I find legitimate complaints about a wrong done or a mistake to be helpful, at least in my profession. I encourage people to point out my errors so I can correct them. However, I’ve noticed that many people complain about things like the city and county governments, the national government and the laws in our state in a very hateful way.

Angry complaints don’t have the same effect as tactful ones. Angry phone calls are usually met with anger from the person taking the heat, breaking down communication without efficiently solving the problem or fixing a slight. For the record, I am not talking about complaints about my own stories. Complainers in Sidney are usually pretty tactful. I do have many friends in the news business who experience angry critiques on a regular basis. I think our online culture adds to this. When we’re not face to face, we tend to forget that the person receiving our fury has a face and a name and feelings, whether or not they made a mistake or did something you didn’t like. I think everyone in the news business has received a furious Facebook or email message from a viewer, listener or reader. I know that those working in government and in business deal with the same type of thing as well. I’d just like to say on behalf of all of us, voicing your complaint entirely in capital letters does not make us take you more seriously.

I think angrily complaining about what we see as other’s missteps lets us safely forget about our own problems while we focus all of our energy in someone else’s. This might make us feel good for a while, but will probably leave us with a bad taste in our mouths after the confrontation doesn’t go as planned. If the government’s doing something you don’t like, will you really feel better about it after yelling at an official? Will complaining to law enforcement about laws you don’t like really change the fact that you broke them? It will not.

I advocate for calm, civil complaining where both sides can voice their concerns and explain their actions. This is the way to solve problems while ensuring that everyone understands one another. However, I admit sometimes angry complaining is just too much fun.