PhDSciNet Roundtable 6: Talking About Life’s Little Irritations

Historical interview: The following preserves the research experiences and personal views expressed in the original manuscript.

PhDSciNet Interview Series

Talking About Life's Little Irritations

We all have a soft side. We are willing to help others and have kind hearts, so why do some people keep testing our boundaries and pushing us to the point of exploding? Having a temper is perfectly normal. After all, some people are different from us, and we do not have to make peace with them or understand their behavior. We also encounter little everyday annoyances that can send a good mood plunging in an instant. How should we express our dissatisfaction and pressure reasonably in those moments? How can we manage our emotions?

01 About Your Emotions

Question 01: Have you been happy lately? Do you think you are easy to get along with?

Eureka: Overall, I feel I have been quite happy recently. I think I have a very good temper, and other people also see me as someone who is nice and very easygoing.

Calorie (卡路里): My mood has been fairly ordinary lately. Because of the pandemic, and because I live alone, I do not interact with people very often day to day. But most of the time my mood is quite stable, and people generally describe me as fairly friendly.

Question 02: What caused your most recent change in mood?

Eureka: The last time I felt unhappy was actually last night. A little after 11 p.m., I suddenly received an email from the government about a project I was collaborating on, saying that a document still had not been submitted. The email arrived after 11 p.m., and the deadline was midnight that same night. Another collaborator had originally been responsible for that task, but I discovered that he had not done the work assigned to him. He was now away and unreachable; he had already flown somewhere else. So I was the one who had to step in and complete it, and I had to switch instantly from weekend mode to emergency mode.

In the end, I rushed through it very quickly and got it done. I felt that the incident made my mood turn unpleasant all at once. Having to finish work that was originally someone else's responsibility made me really want to vent.

Calorie (卡路里): I recently had a collaborative project with people in Germany, and they wanted me to collect some data for them. They had said that data fairly similar to what we collected before would be fine, so I spent a whole day collecting more than 200 data points. Later, they emailed asking why the data looked like that. I said, 'Didn't you ask me to collect data similar to the previous set? I collected it in the way we had already discussed.'

Then he replied, 'Oh, that was my mistake. I did not explain clearly. What I actually wanted was this,' which was different from what we had collected before. So what I encountered was a communication problem, or perhaps he had forgotten how we collected the earlier data. It was a misunderstanding caused by poor communication that meant I had to collect the data again. Although he later apologized and acknowledged that it was his mistake, I still felt quite annoyed, because I had to spend another full day collecting the data again.

Question 03: What did you do after becoming unhappy?

Eureka: I did communicate with the colleague I mentioned earlier. But in many cases, I know people are difficult to change. My approach then is to limit my losses promptly. First, I lower my expectations of the outside world and of other people. For example, I might originally have hoped he would do something well, but later I would only expect him to complete it, and could accept a mediocre result. Second, I look for an alternative. If he really cannot do the task well, can I find another person or an alternative technical approach? That way, if his performance is poor, I can activate my backup plan in time to recover my losses.

Still, yesterday's incident really did make me irritable in an instant, because I had not expected it. I anticipated that he might do it poorly, but not that he would fail to do it at all. So I felt a little overwhelmed at once and really wanted to vent to someone. In fact, I complained about it to many friends last night. I feel that communicating with the person involved is unlikely to produce very positive feedback; I can only adjust myself. I think it is difficult for me to change the way he handles things. What you regard as poor behavior may be something he considers perfectly normal, which makes it hard to change. To be frank, these incidents do not rise to the level of violating basic social norms or even the law. Everyone also operates within a different comfort zone. If we impose our own approach on someone else, they will naturally be unhappy.

So rather than make everyone unhappy and bring the conflict out into the open, it may be better to turn around and adjust your own expectations.

Calorie (卡路里): I think I was unhappy at the time not just because I had spent extra time, but because the email he sent after receiving my new data and having questions was not particularly polite. It seemed to suggest that a mistake on my side had prevented him from getting the data he wanted. His email was not very courteous, so my reply was not especially courteous either. I copied and pasted our earlier correspondence to show him how we had agreed to collect the data. After reading it, he realized the mistake was his, so in his next reply he acknowledged that and apologized.

The matter was then resolved, and I collected another batch of data and sent it to him. I see the incident as a communication problem; the specific issue itself did not make me particularly eager to complain. But the way he communicated with me after discovering that the data differed from his expectations did not make me feel respected, and that made me unhappy.

02 About Cleaning Up Other People's Messes

Question 04: How do you view cleaning up someone else's mess?

Calorie (卡路里): This happens quite often. In a laboratory, for example, people share equipment or experimental areas, and sometimes someone does not clean up promptly after using them. If it would only take me a few minutes, I probably would not go looking for that person; I would just clean up after them myself.

Different people are sensitive to these things to different degrees, though. Some colleagues in our group, particularly white colleagues, will post directly in the group chat if they see that the previous user left a shared area dirty or disorganized. They ask who did it and tell people to be more careful next time. Perhaps we handle things differently. Personally, if it does not take much time, I will do it for them.

Question 05: Does cleaning up someone else's mess bother you?

Calorie (卡路里): No. I may classify this as a small matter. Even if I do it ten times, as long as it only takes a few minutes each time, I do not feel that it causes me much trouble.

Eureka: I feel that at the first moment, when you see another mess waiting for you to clean up, your mood will certainly wobble a little: why is it me again? But after finishing, if you can promptly vent to someone and discover that your friends or colleagues share your view, you feel that there are still plenty of reasonable people and that everyone supports you. Your bad mood then disappears, and you realize that you are actually in the right. On the surface, the other person gained an advantage and you put in the work, but you still feel quite comfortable inside. You feel that you hold the moral high ground and have every justification for complaining.

Question 06: Are some people ungrateful when you clean up their mess?

Eureka: Of course. Some people receive your one-sided kindness, goodwill, and unpaid effort, but do not think you are helping them at all. For example, with the shared experimental facilities we just mentioned, someone may fail to clean them promptly, leaving you to do the cleaning. That may be considered a trivial matter, not worth reporting to a supervisor or manager. They have countless other things to deal with and will not get involved.

Essentially, when these borderline behaviors in daily life or work cannot be addressed through effective open communication or complaint channels that deliver procedural fairness, you can only accumulate dissatisfaction and helplessness inside. Once those feelings reach a certain threshold, we develop the desire and impulse to vent. If that conversation goes smoothly and pleasantly, you find a group of friends who think the same way. If your family and colleagues strongly support your view, your earlier dissatisfaction and frustration gradually ease.

Calorie (卡路里): We may not pay much attention to a small incident once or twice, perhaps because our focus is elsewhere.

For example, if I have an experiment to do today and am focused on doing it well, then if I find the bench dirty, I will not waste emotional energy on it. I will choose to clean it quickly and start my experiment.

On the other hand, after doing this many times, you start asking whether 'not minding' is really the right approach. For example, when someone who does mind posts a message in the group, the supervisor may step in and say that everyone should respect each other and follow the rules when using shared facilities. People will then take the matter more seriously. If you never speak up, people who repeatedly disregard the rules will continue not to care. Over time, that is bad for the group's mood and for laboratory management. So direct communication does have positive aspects.

Overall, it is good if we can keep this from affecting our emotions. But from the broader perspective of laboratory management, having clear rules and kindly reminding people when those rules are challenged is also good.

03 About Taking Small Advantages

Question 07: What has caused your mood to fluctuate?

Calorie (卡路里): Many groups always have a few people with a small bad habit: they borrow things and do not return them. The result is that whenever something cannot be found, everyone automatically thinks of those few people and assumes they must have done it.

Eureka: When I see someone benefit from unreasonable rules or gain a small advantage by skirting the boundaries, I feel a little angry. I think I am the same as you in that respect.

Question 08: Why do some people like taking small advantages?

Eureka: I think that mindset may have a lot to do with the environment in which someone grew up. Although the benefit sometimes seems laughable—the object itself may not look valuable—they still want to secure as much as possible for themselves. So I think that when we encounter someone who likes taking small advantages, we should not simply condemn them from the moral high ground. We should recognize that they must have difficulties of their own.

If you can communicate kindly with them, that is good. You can explain that the behavior is not generally welcomed. But if they refuse to accept it, I think there are still more people who share our views, and we can simply keep our distance from that person.

Calorie (卡路里): When it comes to taking small advantages, I actually think it may not be so complicated. At its core, perhaps there is a little selfishness or self-centeredness. Their earlier life may have been too smooth, or nobody may have pointed this out to them before, so they do not know that such behavior may be inappropriate. Then, in a new environment, it ends up making other people uncomfortable.

Question 09: Should we remain socially tactful or true to ourselves?

Calorie (卡路里): Personally, I think it is difficult to say what we should be like. If you interpret being true to yourself in a very simple way, it means having little experience. The state you were in as a child might be considered your unfiltered, authentic state. Sometimes we act in a certain way not because we consciously know what we should do, but because our different experiences have taught us different ways of handling situations, and we choose accordingly.

For example, if your previous environment was very comfortable and safe, and the people around you were friendly, you may develop a direct and straightforward way of communicating and handling things. When you enter a new environment, however, you may find more intense competition among colleagues, or colleagues whose personalities are more sensitive and less easygoing. Your previous direct, uncomplicated approach may then be less effective.

In that new environment, you may gradually develop what people call 'social tact,' because you learn that expressing yourself or acting in a certain way helps both sides avoid being hurt. Different experiences give us different ways of handling situations, so I do not think there is a single way you should behave. Sometimes we cannot change these things ourselves, and the environment is always changing too.

Eureka: I think people should remain true to themselves. Your choice of whether to vent may change as you grow older and gain experience. You can hold back an immediate impulse and choose not to speak, but you should always have an internal set of scales: know which behavior is right or wrong, which deserves praise, and which should not be encouraged.

That is what I mean by inner authenticity. You have the right not to speak up, but in your own mind you must understand which behavior is truly right.

PhD guests: Eureka and Calorie (卡路里), listed in order of appearance

Editor: Honey Peach Oolong (蜜桃乌龙)

Interviewer: Fantuan (饭团)