Focusing on the Behavior of Other Instructors instead of My Own

I felt very energetic today, but that's not necessarily good.  It may make me more aggressive.  I learned from College Oral Communication 2 that 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 is not necessarily the best score.  Ten can be aggressive, and 1 is passive, so the author considers 5 to be the best because it's assertive without being aggressive.  When I think I'm delivering a message loud and clear, I may be overwhelming and terrifying the students.  I sort of had that feeling today. 

But let's not talk about my negative behavior.  Let's talk about someone else's.

This morning for example, I went into the copy room in the Arts building, where both machines were working (hallelujah) and I was the only person.  (It was before 7:30.)  After I starting making copies, two other teachers came in, and I told them that I would limit my copying to three minutes and then let one of them have a turn.  But in the middle of one back-to-back copying the machine I was using ran out of paper, so I went to the mail room, where there's a supply.  If I remember correctly, someone went in with me, but I may not remember correctly.  In any case, I carried three reams back to the copy room, and while one teacher was at copy machine 2 and the other teacher was waiting and looking on, I unwrapped each of the three reams and finished the part of my copying that had stalled.  I then said to the waiting, looking on teacher, "If you're going to take only three minutes, you can go now, and I'll get behind you."  I'm pretty sure she said "Okay" rather than "thank you," and she started making copies.  After she'd been at it for about three minutes, the teacher at copy machine 2 was having problems.  The teacher I'd given the go ahead to said, "I'll let you two do your copying now," so I told the teacher at copy machine 2 that if she had something quick to do, she could go before me since she was having problems with copy machine 2, but she misunderstood and thought I was asking to use her machine.  I said, "No, I meant that you could use this machine before me."  She said that copy machine 2 was now working.

But to my surprise the teacher I'd let go ahead of me continued to make copies and even paused to paste together her original.

I know this teacher and I even like her.  I'm interested in what she teaches too.  But over the years I've watched her overuse the machine to make hundreds of copies of pages from extra books.  (By extra I mean that they're not the books she asks the students to buy.)  I've also noticed that she's not very considerate of  other instructors.  Maybe she has a bad sense of how long she's taking.  Maybe she cares more about taking care of her own class needs than about being fair and making sure that the other instructors can take care of the copies for their classes.  But it's a little bit startling. 

Nowadays, when I'm startled, I try to take a look at myself and find ways that I might be startling others.  But that comes only after focusing on their transgressions.