Moratorium on kindness?

Last week, I found myself in a room with two people raising their voices at each other, just like so many times before, with the common element of all the arguments being one individual. This is a person who has, to put it mildly, a problem. With very poor boundaries, respect for others, and  - in my opinion - self-respect, she blasts her way through any situation that presents her with difficulty, becoming verbally abusive, refusing to listen to anyone else's opinion or explanation, and spewing her toxicity over everyone within earshot. The fact that this is a work environment, where the staff are thought of as educated professionals, makes this even more disgusting.

In this most recent outburst, a well-meaning colleague was taken to task for having made a mistake in the course of doing a favour. Instead of bringing it to her attention in  a calm, professional manner, there was accusation, vitriole, and the now-commonplace verbal barrage, complete with headache-inducing volume, finger wagging and that distorted, arrogant facial expression I have become familiar with in the last seven months.

At the end of the ugliness, there was an announcement that colleagues were no longer to do favours for each other, a demand initially screamed across the room by The-out-of-control-one. For some reason or other, I found this even more offensive than the ugly argument I had just been privy to. To instruct people not to help each other, when they form a team whose very thriving depends on co-operation, unselfish sharing of resources and being there for each other (especially when deadlines loom), is extremely counter-productive. For me, it was completely unacceptable, because it goes against my chosen value system, a system of living gently and kindly that I actively promote every day of my life. I do this to counter the bitterness and vindictiveness in the world, in  fact the very harshness which oozes from the pores of this offensive colleague.

I refuse to stop helping people, and I refuse to stop doing favours when my fellow-workers need help. To make sure no-one was in any doubt as to where I stood on the matter, in the midst of the chaos and screaming, as the announcement ("No-one does favours for anyone anymore!") was being made, I shook my head fiercely and made my own counter-announcement to my stunned colleagues: "I don't mind if you do favours for me, and I'm happy to keep doing them for you."

How do we encourage our charges to live compassionately and considerately towards each other, and towards the planet, if we can't do so ourselves?

There's only ONE loser in this story.