A Florida woman makes three 911 emergency calls to report that her local McDonald’s ran out of McNuggets. We call her “a frivolous waste of taxpayer money.”

A Washington man argues for a national boycott or lawsuit because Wendy’s charges 70 cents more to upgrade a double cheeseburger to a combo meal than to upgrade a fish sandwich to a combo meal. We call him “a loser with nothing better to do.”

A South Korean couple spends 10 hours a day at an internet cafe raising a virtual child, while their real baby starves to death at 5.5 pounds. We call them “criminally negligent.”

Yes, it’s very easy to judge them. But are these people really any different from us?

I know you want to say yes (I sure do), but what exactly makes them different from you? If you had been given the same genes and the same experiences, wouldn’t you have made the same decisions? If nature and nurture are the same, what else can be different?

Effort seems to be a big factor in how we judge others. We expect them to exercise discretion in matters we think they should be able to control, while giving them a pass on things they can’t help. Which of these judgments do you agree with?

• “It’s not his fault he’s epileptic; we can’t blame him for striking someone during a seizure.”
• “It’s not his fault he’s ugly; we can’t blame him for looking like that.”
• “It’s not his fault he’s weak; we can’t blame him for not being able to lift much weight.”
• “It’s not his fault he’s crabby; we can’t blame him for not smiling much.”
• “It’s not his fault he’s addicted to food; we can’t blame him for overeating.”
• “It’s not his fault he’s stupid; we can’t blame him for thinking you can take fireworks on a plane.”
• “It’s not his fault he’s lazy; we can’t blame him for sitting back and doing nothing.”
• “It’s not his fault he’s evil; we can’t blame him for being a serial killer.”

But who decides what we should be able to control? Maybe it’s naturally easy for one person to be friendly, another person to be honest, and another person to be brave. How much credit can you get for just doing what comes naturally?

Calvin (Hobbes’ six-year-old buddy) said that Santa’s naughty and nice list is unfair, because Santa doesn’t judge people on a curve. Susie likes performing good deeds, but Calvin hates them, so he has to work a lot harder. Shouldn’t one of his good deeds count as much as ten of hers?

Do you judge people by their house, their car, their clothes, their job, their looks, their intelligence, their personality, their friends, their family, or anything else? Of course you do. We all do. But why?

Photo by Sudhamshu

Like many kids, I always considered Christmas the best time of the year. And also like many kids, I always wanted to meet Santa Claus.

Not the Santa you see at the mall. I mean the real Santa. Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, whatever you call him – but the real guy, not one of his helpers.

I knew exactly where and when he was coming (down the chimney on Christmas), so it should have been easy to meet him. But there was a problem. Santa won’t come unless you’re asleep. So if I stayed up to see him, he wouldn’t come (apparently, this derives from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle).

Fortunately, I had a solution. One year, in addition to the usual milk and cookies, I left out a Polaroid camera, with a note instructing Santa to take a picture of himself. It wouldn’t be quite the same as meeting him in person, but an authentic picture was certainly nothing to sneeze at. Best of all, it circumvented the “Santa won’t come unless you’re asleep” rule.

Christmas morning, I came running down to see my picture of the real Santa. Only there wasn’t one. Santa had neglected to do it. As I stood there wondering why he hadn’t grasped the concept, I could only think that I must not have been clear enough with my wording. Maybe his native language was Dutch or Polish or something.

So the next year, I left out the camera along with a foolproof, airtight note that left absolutely no possibility for ambiguity. I had him now! But the next day, there was no picture to be found. I couldn’t understand why that idiot Santa had difficulty following such simple instructions.

But time went on and I became a little wiser. Eventually I realized that we can only understand people when we put ourselves in their shoes, and a simple change in perspective sometimes makes all the difference.

Photo by kevindooley

Photo by Mike Babcock

I started off writing another post on ROWE, about the issue of whether jobs require our physical presence during core hours.

On my post ROWE Vs. TOWE, Dot at Deeper Issues commented:

“I say it depends on the business. If all the business’s clients start their day at 8:30, then 9:00 doesn’t work. Also, when people start being late, morale falls.

ROWE is an attractive concept to people who don’t like the 9-to-5, but it’s not for everyone. So many Internet entrepreneurs make the assumption that all employees are potential entrepreneurs, or at least are high-level white collar workers. If your job is answering your boss’s phone, for example, and your boss gets in at 8:30, then for you to arrive at 9:00 is going to mess up his day and possibly miss out on clients who call while he’s on the phone with someone else. If you’re the boss, on the other hand, it may matter less when you get in.”

As I started writing, I realized I needed a full post just to respond to her claim that “so many Internet entrepreneurs make the assumption that all employees are potential entrepreneurs.” So let’s talk about that now, and revisit the 9-5 another time.

The “entrepreneur assumption” is an objection I see all the time about Robert Kiyosaki’s extremely pro-entrepreneur attitude. The critics say that not everyone is supposed to be an entrepreneur; if everyone were an entrepreneur, who would teach kids, cook meals, give haircuts, etc?

But I don’t think anyone is saying that EVERYONE is a potential entrepreneur. Or that everyone is anything, really. People have their opinions, and they’re either just writing what they want to say, or they’re writing for other people like them, or they’re writing for people they want to convince.

It might be less objectionable if they stuck in some qualifiers and were less assertive, but that would also water down their message. The same way that “I’m gonna bust a cap in yo ass” is potentially less accurate than “I reserve the right to bust a cap in a body part of yours yet to be determined,” but it gets the point across much better.

I’m actually somewhere in the middle of the qualifying your words debate. Some people deliberately state their opinions as facts to challenge people to either agree or disagree with them, while others choose their words carefully to avoid offending people.

I’m somewhere in between. While I don’t want to say anything that’s so oversimplified as to be irresponsible, I also assume that my readers are either somewhat like me, or at least they want to hear my opinion. Without any assumptions, nothing would ever get done.

Right now, I’m being awfully bold in assuming that my readers speak English. I just jumped right in, making no attempt to ask if English is an acceptable language to use, and making no apology for doing so.

OK, that’s a pretty basic assumption, and I think everyone can forgive me for making it. What about things that aren’t so agreeable?

I started blogging shortly after reading Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job, which I really liked and wanted to write my own version of. But I can’t honestly say that no one should ever get a job, because, um…we need to buy stuff. So I wrote Top 10 Reasons Not To Have A Job, which got the point across without being so blunt. I even followed it up with Top 10 Reasons To Have A Job for some balance, even though I had a hard time coming up with 10 reasons.

Some people might say this was far too wishy-washy. I would almost agree, except I think some balance is needed on this topic. I get sick of all the people saying that jobs are for suckers, while ignoring the odds against success as an entrepreneur.

However, I’m not always going to be this balanced, because it would take forever and be too boring. Sometimes we need to be direct. Let me give it a try: George W. Bush was by far the worst president in U.S. history, and he did unspeakable damage to the country. I’d call him evil, except he’s too dumb to be evil on purpose. He makes Sarah Palin look like Marilyn vos Savant.

Now that comment was a little one-sided. I didn’t even attempt to point out his good qualities, and this would get more complaints than a more balanced assessment would. But a personal political blog with strong opinions is far more likely to be popular than one that plays it safe.

At the same time, the comment I made about Bush was still relatively safe. Bush is pretty unpopular, and let’s be honest, he’s a glorified rodeo clown. So not too many people will be offended here.

You want something that’s offensive? Try Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion. It’s very controversial to say the least, and it’s arguable whether it helped him more than it hurt him. I would never write something like that, even if I agreed with it. Too great a risk of offending innocent people, without enough benefit to offset that.

But I’ve taken a stand at times. I’ve said you’d have to be crazy to want a job, even though that’s not perfectly accurate or applicable to everyone. Then again, I wouldn’t necessarily rule out the possibility of posting things I don’t even agree with, just for the sake of showing multiple sides of the story.

Sometimes, the real answer doesn’t seem to be reducible to a simple yes or no. On the other hand, we want to see people take a stand and have an opinion already!

What do you think? Be opinionated and direct, or balanced and gentle? Please state your opinion as an absolute certainty, and say that everyone who disagrees with you is a communist.