I was sitting in a job interview, trying to find a, “I’m confident and comfortable,” pose in a very uncomfortable chair, as the questions wound down. Since I’d already answered everything I could think of about how I function at work and what my dream job would be and what I like and dislike about Adobe software, I wasn’t sure what more there was to talk about.
The interviewer leaned forward across the table. “So,” he said, in a manner that told me this was the key question of the 38 minutes we had together. “Are you a cat person or a dog person?”
This has historically been a difficult topic for me. However, since I was going for confident and casual in the interview, I made the split second decision to lay it out straight.
“Neither, actually,” I said. “I don’t love animals, and I don’t hate them. I have no preference.”
Without hesitation, he responded, “So you’re saying you’re heartless.”
Knowing I’d lost the candor gamble, I smiled and nodded.
“Exactly. That’s me!”
I didn’t get the job.
See, there are basically three responses to me saying I don’t love animals:
1) I must be a heartless and untrustworthy human
2) I haven’t yet met the “right” animal to make me fall in love
3) I must have had a “bad experience” with animals and I need to work through it in therapy and come back to the light
Friends, I am 31 years old. I can safely tell you what I like and don’t like at this point. My tastes may shift as I age, but the basics are not going to. My favorite color is black, I don’t like how rubbery mushrooms feel when I chew them, and I don’t love or hate animals. I was around pets for the first 18 years of my life, and although I did have some traumatic experiences (a parrot once bit all the way through my lip, for instance) I have worked through them and I don’t need therapy. I know you will try to convince me that I am wrong, but the cuteness of animals (some of them are cute, I agree) will never outweigh their grossness and inconvenience for me.
And, you’ll be shocked to learn, I have plenty of empathy and heart, despite my lack of pet love.
Now, as I say this, I know that I need to make a clarification: I don’t hate your pets. In fact, some of your pets bring a level of enjoyment to me. But I don’t love them like you do and I never will.
I know that some of you will try to change my mind, or tell me that I am wrong, which is sort of funny. We tend to want to pull others to the way we see things, instead of accepting our different opinions. I do this too, I’m not just pointing fingers at all of you. What if we saw differing opinions as ways we all complement each other instead of opportunities to argue? And this goes both ways – for years I have pretended to like animals in order to avoid the conversation, but what if I saw my “unpopular opinion” as a chance to bring a different side of humanity to the world?
What’s your unpopular opinion that gets you into arguments?
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