I own a restaurant and though it is very small with an equally small amount of employees, I still deal with a melting pot of personalities filled with many pros and cons. I look at these interactions in a stand back and take it all in approach but the boss man responsibilities make me feel like I have to take a different approach. I am very passive and believe that at my age and the age of my employees, there should be an internal sense of checks and balances that I don't need to
"correct" behavior. I know letting the natives run amuck will come back to bite you in the ass, but I think in 9 years of doing this that I have not had that happen per se. Sure I get the "I am not going to let them get the better of me" personalities, but when I am cognizant of any particular situations where I replay the scenario in how I might handle it, I either get an agreement or someone that is afraid to say your a fucking pushover. I see a lot of people that appear to me to have so much lack of self esteem that they need to take it out on those that are to unwilling or lacking in gusto to give a solid retort. I fear this is what our current generations are instilling in their kids with the "sterilize" everything before you hand it over to your loved ones scenario.
I hope we can grow stronger and learn to appreciate our own brain's responses enough to express them in a manner that is engaging enough to have the recipient think, "hey maybe he/she didn't handle that properly and didn't mean to attack me personally but maybe I was being a little to invasive to begin with"!
Who knows but sometimes to me the negativity is so overwhelming I think that there are a lot of unhappy people out there.
cheers!