I was in my early 20s, working as a manager in a restaurant, when I first heard the concept “perceiving is believing” or said differently “perception is reality.” It was part of our management training booklet, in a section that discussed quality of service. Although the concept was new to me and had its appeal, I, forever the idealist, sort of rejected it because there’s always an impregnable truth.
“What’s going on with my eggs? It’s been an hour.”
No, it’s actually been 10 minutes and the kitchen is backed up, but I guess it’s been an hour to you. (This unspoken, of course.)
Pardon my sarcasm but this job drove me insane.
The section in the training manual, when you got right down to it, basically instructed team members to agree with the whimsies of all guests and their issues. This also bothered me because we were feeding into misconceptions and breeding ignorance.
Alas, as I mentioned, I was in my early 20s, idealistic, and hadn’t yet fully acquainted myself with another old adage: “Pick your battles.”
Yes, I was playing psychologist, and I was on a roll, so it’s not surprising that my career in restaurants was short-lived.
I quit the job like a bad habit years ago and never looked back, all my negative perceptions of the restaurant business intact.
The term “perception is reality” stuck with me, though, and I’ve seen it in action throughout my writing career. In fact, poor journalism is a perfect example. And although misconceptions and misperceptions rear up on a regular basis in my life, I’m becoming a master at picking my battles, so I mostly let sleeping dogs lie…especially in my marriage where, as a man, if you don’t know how to pick your battles, you’re done for.
But no matter the psychology behind this term you can have some fun with it in various applications. Go online and type in “Someecards,” and you’ll see some great examples (note, some of the cards are of an offensive nature and contain graphic language). When you break an event, a situation, a circumstance, anything, down to its root definition, real comedy happens with a simple twist of reality.
Here’s a Someecard example:
With the holiday season upon us, everyone with a family knows, “it is what you make of it.” And I’m frankly surprised that the holidays are as popular as they are.
They start with a roundup of family and friends celebrating thanks around a 25 pound carcass. The celebration moves directly into an event called Black Friday, which sounds more like a horror movie or something that happens during or after an apocalypse. Moving on, we fill our homes for a few weeks with decorations like big, grinning, nutcrackers with Chiclet teeth and a hinged back. We hang poisonous plants that can kill you and then demand that people to kiss under them. Yes, with that impending doom above my head, I’d probably kiss anyone…anyone. Throughout the season, we bite the heads and limbs off little baked men (and proceed to say, “Wow, these are really good”). The holidays are a time to encourage kids to sit on the lap of a guy in a mall, who smokes a pipe, has no discernable income, and flies all over the world under the cover of darkness*. On Christmas Eve, we set out dairy products to sit in front of a fire all night in case the man (who’s technically breaking and entering) bearing lots of gifts gets thirsty. And then, of course, there’s the reckoning of The Naughty List. Not to mention there’s always a risk of finding a highly combustible rock in your sock. The season ends with a bang on New Year’s, when everyone makes promises of self-improvement while highly intoxicated, wearing cone hats, and body glitter. Any other day of the year, that’s called regret in the making.
*Derived from cartoonist Tom Armstrong’s joke about Santa.
