Yes & yes

I agree and try to live by that philosophy. My mom is a very negative person. She's the type of person who will chew out a store employee about a policy, not realizing that they poor schmuck working for minimum wage had NOTHING to do with creating the policy!

I like to think I've always tried to be a nice person but after years of working in customer service has made me especially sympathetic to people in service positions. Unless they're blatantly doing a piss poor job, I'm always nice to them.

Word.

I spent 14 years with a partner whose entire personality seemed to be hard-wired for hatred. Her day-to-day thought processes were occupied with finding new things to be bitter about and new reasons to dislike just about anyone in our lives, and her chief pleasure in life was seeing others fail — particularly if she'd engineered their demise.

I recognise it now as a personality disorder, but at the time it baffled me as to why she poured so much mental energy into hating perfectly nice people when the FAR easier path would have been to chill the hell out.

....Yeah, 14 years. Don't ask.