to think that having a hard time doesn't mean you have an excuse to treat people how the hell you want.

yanbu

YANBU

Someone I know had a bad time and proceeded to treat his gf (my friend) like shite. When I told her she said 'oh well this has happened to him'. I told her well I couldn't care whats happened to him, that gives him no right to act the way he does towards her.

Apparently I'm heartless

Yanbu.

too scared to disagree

YANBU, I've had some pretty shit time of it on occasion and have always managed to be nice. I dread to think what certain colleagues' lives must be like to make them as they are.

YANBU.

There is one vicious, unhelpful, obstructive colleague at work who has been creating lots of extra work for everyone and being horrifically rude. She has been using the excuse of a bereavement, to justify her nastiness and refusal to perform various tasks, for over a year now. In fact, we are now in the "don't you KNOW it was the anniversary of X's memorial service yesterday??????" phase.

She was a pain in the arse before X died.

Yanbu. Some people have a very tough time of it and still manage to treat others with respect. Others are just badly behaved.

YADNBU. We all have ups and downs in life but there should be no excuse for treating others so meanly.

Yanbu.

If someone is going through a tough time I tend to give them a little bit of leeway. But generally I think you are NBU. I once told a woman in a wheelchair that there was no excuse for how rude she was being and my mum told my aunt (who had always been an aggressive and rude woman) off severely when she called a hospice nurse "a fucking stupid cunt".

If someone's behaviour is completely out of character at a time of stress then I will let it go, but we make too many excuses for bad behaviour.

clanger do you work with my ex boss? sounds similar

YANBU. I've just been on the receiving end of some random nastiness from someone who isn't coping with a few things.
Of course I don't know the half of it, but neither does she.
We're all weighed down by something. We don't all go around being shits. If I feel unable to deal with people well, I take myself off and deal with myself.

can you all come round to my house? especially you wannabe? my mother is having a hard time health wise (not life threatening, more prolonged) she has gone from non judgmental lovely lady to someone who has alienated everyone she knows almost and treats us like rubbish now i fear the very few people in her life will abandon her completely, and i feel i cant as i am her only "child" the moment you say anything she flips outs (irrationally so)

I remember talking to dd about my own teenage years and how I was
an anti-social prat who didn't care about the feelings of others a bit of an independent loner.

Dd (a wheelchair user at the time, with severe anxiety issues and totally dependent on the support of her friends) looked at me thoughtfully and said "oh well, you could afford that".

Harsh though it is, I recognised she was right. Because life has treated her unfairly, she can't afford to have fewer social skills than other people; if anything she needs to have better social skills to make it a level playing field. So this is something I have always tried to work on; to give her the skills to make things easier in ways in which it can be made easier.

I too have tried to work on my social skills since life started biting us on the bum.

My great model is my MIL. She is widowed, in a nursing home, paralysed from the waist down by cancer, in pain, unable to perform the most basic functions without waiting for a hoist- and she is the warmest, most caring person you could imagine. If I could grow up like her, it would be wonderful.

YANBU.

Good and thoughtful post by Cory too.

yanbu, I have disabled dc and stbxh, often hear the opinion that stbxh must be so because of stress caused by disability etc - no it is because ex is a twunt and was long before before dc got sick (stupid me for thinking he just needed to grow up a bit). I sometimes do not have good days - on those days I keep my gob shut so the most rudeness that will occur is someone thinking I am a bit quiet (and everyone is entitled to quiet days!). I have never and will never go around swearing at people because my life is different (as opposed to stressful, perception is key) to theirs and if I ever feel the need to I will have a moan to my friends instead like everyone else should! My neighbours on the other hand got a bad diagnosis last summer and have spent the past year targeting my house for want of a better stress outlet. I don't take the bait but do think they need help and do not accept that their bad behaviour is down to family illness and the resulting stress, they are just badly behaved.

YANBU at all.

Depends. It's not my automatic thought when someone is rude, but if it's someone I know with a health problem I'm more inclined to be a bit more patient.

On the other side of things, I have several health conditions, and sometimes I am a complete bitch when they're flaring up. Either because I'm in pain, because I'm confused and overwhelmed, because my MH filters are kicking in, or because I'm just bloody fed up. I'm snappier with people when I'm in one of these moods, especially with strangers who think it's okay to start asking me questions about why I'm so young and using a stick / chair. I'll answer that I'm disabled, but in a 'closing the conversation' type way.

That said, if I am rude to someone without meaning to be, I do apologise.

So it's not reasonable to accept any negative behavior aimed at you because it might be X Y or Z, but it's also reasonable to think, after having retaliated, that maybe things aren't all rosy in their world if they're willing to be so rude.

An old woman once had a go at me - enough to nearly reduce me to tears - because I was sat in a priority seat (worth adding here, there were plenty of seats - she sat down next to me). When she'd finished, and I pointed out that I had a walking stick, she said "Well I didn't see it, did I?". No apology, nothing. So I replied, sharply, that no, she hadn't seen it, she hadn't looked, she had just presumed that because I was young, I was being rude, rather than actually needing the seat. Another older woman then joined in having a go at me for being 'rude and disrespectful'. I said to her as I was getting off, quietly, that next time she should think before she spoke, because the fact that I had to use a disabled seat at the age of 21 would bother me much more than it would her. I don't care if I upset her actually. If it meant that the next time she got on a bus, she didn't upset someone else, then it was worth it.

If I feel unable to deal with people well, I take myself off and deal with myself.

This is a good point too. When I've got PMT I try and remove myself from public as much as possible and lay low. Otherwise it can all go horribly wrong. Same with getting too hungry or tired. It's about managing your own moods and not dumping them on others (although no one is perfect, least of all me).

Very interesting point about people needing to have good social skills. A relative of mine who was very ill was unfailingly gracious and appropriate. She was an inspiration.

I agree with you. YANBU.

Though SirBoobalot, you had every justification for giving those two women a dressing down. They were rude first

It is true (reading SirBoobALot's post) that I don't want dd to be a push-over either: appropriate self assertion is another skill she is going to need more of than most and that has been a problem for her. But again, it's the same thing in a sense: she needs to give extra thought to how to get her views across effectively.

But in your case sirboobalot you were sitting there minding your own business and someone was rude to you. Also a complete stranger asking you why you're using a stick/chair is also rude, and if they get snapped at it's the risk they take for being nosy.

SirBoobALot i think you were a lot more polite than i'd have been in your situation; you handled those women in a calm yet assertive manner that was just right by the sound of it.