Focusing on a negative can distract people from the positive side of doing their job.

It’s Not about Fruitcake

I love fruitcake.  Like everything else, fruitcake has people who love it and people who do not. Nearly two million fruitcakes are sold each year. I doubt that many people eat an entire fruitcake, since most fruitcakes have a very dense texture and are about a foot in diameter and four inches high less that plug missing in the middle.  However, I think that given a week, I could eat an entire fruitcake.

I read an article online the other day that was very critical of fruitcakes.  Fruitcakes seem to have a public polarity rarely seen outside of politics. It baffles me how people can be so serious about fruitcakes. On the other hand, these people must feel baffled about how much I love fruitcakes.

What caught my attention is how negative this person was about fruitcakes. The author put a negative opinion out there. I felt on the defensive. The negativity was polarizing. Moreover, the subject of the article was not about fruitcakes. The article was promoting a company’s product by drawing a negative contrast between their products and other products.

They drew my attention away from their products and focused my attention on defending fruitcakes! They didn’t sell me on their products. Instead, their negativity cluttered my mind and I lost interest in their products.