Neat People vs. Sloppy People

The comparison and contrast essay, “Neat People vs. Sloppy People” written by Suzanne Britt is amusing. Suzanne describes neat people as mean and uncaring human beings; on the other hand according to Suzanne sloppy people are too caring and sentimental. It is obvious that her way of writing was made to amuse readers, to make a comical remark. My understanding of this essay is that Suzanne Britt herself is sloppy, and that is why she resorts to talking well about sloppy people rather than neat people.

Though the purpose of this essay was to entertain readers I do not agree with what she thinks about both classes of people; in my belief it is the other way around. The peculiar thing is that though I do not agree completely, I would have to say that to an extent some of the things that the author says about both forms of people are true. For instance, I myself am a neat person, almost safe to say perfectionist. I find pleasure when everything is organized and put in place. Suzanne makes some comments about neat people that are somewhat true. For example, I agree when she says that neat people like results. Also, just like Suzanne mentions I sometimes find myself dealing with the two unvarying principles: never handle anything more then once, and throw everything away. On the contrary, I don’t believe that neat people are bums and clods at heart. Personally, I grow great sentimental value to the things that surround me. Also, I pay attention to micro and macro details.

Sloppy people on the other hand, according to the author, are great human beings that can’t dare to part with anything because they have grown attached to it. When Suzanne says that sloppy people live in Never-Never land, I agree with her. Sloppy people in my opinion are lazy, but some sloppy people have such a perfect plan designed that they believe can never be reached, thus this give up and don’t try. I do not agree with Suzanne when she mentions that sloppy people give attention to every little detail. I can’t believe that someone who is sloppy can give attention to one thing at a time when their kitchen cabinets, for example, are filled with receipts and mail and a bunch of “junk.”

To conclude with, Suzanne’s Britt essay comparing both sloppy and messy people is an essay that merely entertains the reader. The essay is somewhat reversed in a way, because sloppy people are bums at heart, while neat people are caring and moral. Both forms of customs are completely different but neither is a wrongful way of acting. Nobody can change someone to better suit them. If a person is sloppy they will keep being sloppy forever unless they internally decide they have to change. In the same manner, if a person is neat they will always be neat.

How to Give Orders Like a Man

In my opinion Deborah Tannen outdid herself when she wrote the essay, “How to Give Orders Like a Man.” This particular story brings up a topic that to my understanding is very important. The essay is based upon two forms of speaking to people, the indirect way or the direct way. At the begging we see an executive woman that tells her secretary to run some chores for her in an indirect way, then the story goes on by explaining that the board of trustees tells the executive that she should talk to her secretary in a more direct way, not implying things, but instead barking orders at her. I completely agree with Deborah when she said that men are more direct towards others then woman disregarding backgrounds, customs or ethnics. In my own case I have seen that men do not “sugar coat” things instead they tell you specifically what they want without thinking about the consequences to what is being said.

At first I personally thought that Tannen was heading towards gender issues when she was writing this essay, but as I kept reading on I realized that she was saying that though direct conversation in some cases is bad we need both forms of speaking. For instance, she puts the example of a pilot and a co-pilot on board, and because the co-pilot was not direct, rather he was indirect when speaking to someone with a higher level then him the results were catastrophic because the plane crashed and some people died. In my opinion it is true that elders or someone with more experience then us has earned respect, but that does not mean that we should always talk to them in an indirect way because there are cases when we need to say something to save someone or to stop a terrible event from happening. Also, I do not believe that anyone is higher then I nor anyone else because no one is better then anyone, so in my opinion if someone talks to me directly I will give them the same thing back whether they have more power than me or not.

In my case this topic is quiet controversial because I find myself battling with both forms of communication. I believe just like Tannen that we do need both, indirect and direct communication, because if people would ask for things all the time in an indirect way many would not accomplish the task. People need a little push sometimes to get something done. For example, we cannot expect a boss to be asking us for things in an indirect way all the time because he would just be reminding us about something that we know we have to do but we are too lazy to do it, so for this reason bosses have to talk to some employees in a direct way so that they only have to mention it once and that’s it. To conclude with, I believe that this essay is very interesting for anybody to read whether it be someone with power or a subordinate.

Why Don't We Complain?

The narrative essay written by William F. Buckley Jr, “Why Don’t We Complain?” in my opinion is very realistic to a point. The author begins by setting the reader in a train where it is very hot though the temperature outside is freezing; the author then proceeds to tell us that he notices that everyone else in the train is hot too, but no one has complained. When he finally gets the courage to ask the conductor something he feels as if everyone is looking at him and he does not want to start a commotion. This story can be related to many people with different customs. For instance, in Miami if something is bothering a person the most likely thing that he or she will do is let it be known, whether it be in a sugar coated way or directly. On the contrary, someone with more high class in another part of the world may not complain because they don’t want to be seen as if something is bothering them, they don’t want people to murmur things about them.

The same thing can occur when we are at a restaurant. For example, if you are eating and you’ve asked the waiter for your drink a couple of times and they haven’t brought it the most likely thing to do is to tell the person in a bad way, maybe then they will get what you are asking for. The tricky part to asking someone for something more than once or twice is that the people that surround us at times want to be like the passengers in the train, unheard or unseen, they don’t want to make a spectacle, even when the truth of the matter is that we are in our every right to complain, because if we didn’t our voices wouldn’t be heard.

When the peak of the story arose I began to contemplate on what the author was saying. The truth is that he was stating something that was very true. The author says that because we live in an era where everything gets done for us with a flick of a finger we don’t pay much attention to the things that we are suppose to do, our voices become unheard. Before this age of technology if something was wrong with, for say, the air conditioner we had to do something about it, everyone had to be a little of everything, a plumber an electrician maybe even a mechanic, but because today we have people that specialize in those fields we fall back and we stoop learning, we stop complaining about things. Everyone should let their voices be heard and when something is wrong we should complain because there is going to come a point that we will become unheard of unseen and the things we want will not matter.

The Death of the Moth

The Death of the Moth, in my opinion, is a fine but rare descriptive essay. As I was reading the passage I was contemplating on many of the things the author says. For instance, I have found myself in several occasions pondering on the idea of what life would be like for me if I was not human, if I was an animal or an insect, such as the moth of the story. The idea of imaging oneself being something else rather then what we are is silly.

Like the passage described this moth can be compared to a simple bead of life because it is insignificant, but as the story progresses we realize that though the moth is just a minor insect it too has life, and it wants to live. The moth keeps fluttering from one windowpane to the other because it wants to be free it feels trapped inside, and at the end of the essay we see that it dies because it feels as though it wasted all of its energy and got nowhere. Also, we see that the moth tried to the very last second to stay alive, he struggled to live, but death was stronger then he was.

The Death of the Moth serves as an example to today’s world. It is true that there is a beginning and an ending to life, everyone that lives has to die, but though every human being knows that, they don’t give up in life. As humans we are given the ability to fight for our lives to strive to get what we want, but the clue to that is to never give up, and to always try to the very last moment, to have faith and to believe that we can accomplish anything we desire. As I already stated the moth struggled to live and even when it knew that his time was over it kept fighting for his life, we should do the same.