My father's car broke down this morning. I went to go help and when I arrived I could see that he was in the middle of the road. He wasn't in danger but he was blocking traffic in one of three lanes. Since my father is older he doesn't really know how to use his cell phone. So even though he has a phone to call a tow truck company he couldn't figure out what buttons to press on the phone when going through their reporting system. I don't blame him, modern technology sucks. If silicon valley was serious about improving modern technology, they would fire all hipsters and instead conscript elderly from retirement homes under orders to complain about whatever bothers them.
Anyways I made the call for a tow truck company and was told a tow truck would arrive within 20 minutes. About every 5 minutes someone would drive by and ask if we needed help. In this same scenario I wouldn't of offered to help anyone unless they were someone in my community. So I found it odd that we were receiving so many offers for help. We were even receiving offers from ghetto thugs. We declined the offers because the tow truck was going to arrive any minute and I had already given them our location. Whenever we declined an offer someone would make an arrogant remark. Eventually a random fire truck drove by and they forced us to move our broken car.
The firemen started by berating my father and I for not having pushed the broken car already out of the way. Then they started ordering me around to push the car. While we were pushing the car they were snickering when my father didn't respond quickly. Since he has bad hearing and is older this is to be expected.
My conclusion is basically that people feel like unimportant losers in their daily life. So when a situation arises where they can offer help they want to show off and receive an applause. They aren't interested in genuinely helping, it's just an opportunity to gain attention. You see this same thing in the corporate world where zealous managers go out of their way to publicly crucify people under the guise of offering help when someone makes one microscopic mistake.
I don't see why people can't offer help in a non-condescending way.
Locked
