Humble Pie Doesn’t Taste Very Good

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Today’s lesson in humility and graciousness:
Jeff and I got up from our chairs to go cool off in the hotel pool. A few minutes later we noticed on each side of us umbrellas had gone up. Large umbrellas that now put our chairs completely in the shade.
This not only annoyed me to no end, it was completely unnecessary because the whole other side of the pool had umbrellas up and they could have sat down under those instead of sitting down next to us and putting up the umbrellas.
I got out of the pool and walked back to my chair. I pointed at it and said to the man under the umbrella “now my chair is completely in the shade. I left 5 minutes ago, and it was in the sun. There are tons of chairs over there with umbrellas.”
He seemed annoyed that I was annoyed and said, “I didn’t know you were there.” And then stared at me like I was a lunatic. He didn’t offer to move to another chair under an umbrella.
I picked my stuff up and huffed over to another area where I found two open seats in the sun. I came back and started to grab Jeff’s stuff, which was partially shaded by new people on the other side.
“You’re not gonna bitch at them too?”
“I think it’s inconsiderate of both of you,” I snapped as I walked away.
A few minutes later a waitress came over and said,”I hear you were upset about the umbrella. I apologize. I’m the one who put it up. I didn’t know you were sitting there. The gentleman would like to buy you whatever drink you’d like to make up for it.”
*cue sinking feeling of bad behavior*
“No that’s fine. Tell him I appreciate it very much, though.”
There are a lot of ways I could have handled that scenario better. I could have just moved without saying a word. It wasn’t the big deal I made it out to be, and in the end, the jerk of the situation was me, not the guy sitting under the umbrella trying to keep from getting skin cancer.

Jeff came out of the pool and came over to our new seats.
I said, “I see you stayed out of the fray and let me handle it.”
“Yeah I thought it best to wait until it calmed down over here. Want me to accidentally spill my water on him as I walk by?”
“No, he tried to buy me a drink to apologize. I’m the one who behaved badly.”
“Then maybe I should throw my water on you. I might get a standing ovation from everyone.”

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