Do You Have the Personality of a Bulldozer?
when you are the bulldozer and others are the rubble
I was sitting on my school’s shuttle waiting to exit, when she blustered over me with all her stuff. She unknowingly spilled her travel mug of dark, hot beverage on my Citizen of Humanity jeans. She didn’t even notice. I noticed.
I automatically called her a bulldozer in my heart, you know, the kind of people that plow you over and never have a clue. The bulldozers are the ones to shove you out of their way in tight clothing isles at Old Navy when you’re pregnant and there isn’t anywhere for your 9 month pregnant belly to go.
Because miss-hot-beverage-spiller-without-knowing-it was a blazing bulldozer in my book (lights and beeping included), she got the secret stink eye — friendly eyes on the outside, squinty eyes on the inside. Everything I learned about not being a stingy heart miser, all out the window. Those bulldozer personality people, they press my buttons. I have a hard time being a relational philanthropist with the bulldozers, and for some reason, I seem to find them everywhere.
I felt compelled to track her down to let her know how much of a bulldozer she was, plowing past me with her hot beverage, having no idea of what she did. I hustled out of the shuttle to see that she already raced away. “Like all bulldozers do”, I thought to myself, as I continued to note how oblivious she was.
But, wait! She turned around to ask the shuttle driver a question. Here was my opportunity to nail her.
“What are you drinking in your mug?”, I asked.
“Decaf black tea,” she interrupted, in a soft, sweet voice before I could finish, perked by my curiosity in her beverage choice.
I pointed to my jeans and continued to blurt, “Because it spilled on me when you were getting out and I need to know if it will stain.” “Thanks for letting me know,” I said with my pretend smile.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said softly before she walked away.
Immediately, I could see how much I clobbered this opportunity to be heart generous. Instead, I chose to be a heart scrooge and name called someone a bulldozer.
I seem to have a special lens to find all the bulldozer people in this world. Maybe I’m seeing them everywhere because I’m so much of a bulldozer myself. It takes one to know one.
Like the girl who unknowingly spilled black tea on my leg, I spill black tea on others with my words, and I often have no idea how hot my words are, let alone that they’ve left a mark on someone else. I am quick to identify others as bulldozers, but slow to see the bulldozing bully that lives in my heart.
Where have you been an emotional bulldozer? How can you be less of a bulldozer this week?
Enjoy More Archerfriendliness
Time is our biggest excuse. "I didn't start biking because...I didn't have time to go buy a helmet." "I didn't try eating gluten-free because...I didn't have time to think up a different meal....
If you give a kid a cardamom pod, she'll want to know what's inside. When you tell her there are seeds inside, she'll want to see them. When you say the pod needs crushed, she'll want to know ho...
Because we switched preschools this year, we had to explain the whole mother load of foods that Selah can not eat all over again. I'm nostalgically missing her old preschool, the one that was in o...
Pragati
March 8th, 2012 at 9:06 am
oh, Archer! Haven’t we all? I have been guilty of the same “emotional bulldozing”. I have to remember to stop and think about how my words might sound when they come out. And remember that bad intention isn’t always there on the part of the other person, even if I might interpret that there is. Beautiful words, as always!
Reply
Dr. Archer
March 8th, 2012 at 10:10 am
Thanks for your comment, Pragati. Your second to last sentence is what I really need to remind myself – thank you for sharing that!
Reply
Diane
March 8th, 2012 at 10:18 am
I absolutely love this story. I guess we all can be bulldozers at times.
Reply
Mar
September 3rd, 2013 at 2:25 pm
If we we compared the contributions and liabilities of all the bulldozers with all the “nice” people, is it clear which group made the substantial net contribution?
Reply