Reward or punishment?

I'm once again talking about the importance of our mindset. How we perceive a situation, how we gather information and form emotions about something affects how we react. I prepared some examples I often see in the wild, and they show us the oppurtunity to learn a new skill: Inform yourself before decisions.

Example 1: Government cheated us!

"The government lured us into buying X, then started to increase the price of using it."

That is a bit convoluted as the government and the economy and private businesses are all involved in such things. But think about it backwards. Usually this new shiny thing enjoys a termporary tax reduction -> it can be cheaper either to buy, or to use it. This happens because the gov want to increase its adoption, they want more people on board. Once enough people jumped in, they can return the taxes to a normal amount.

Is this a bad behaviour? Did the early birds got cheated? Nope, they were rewarded because they moved when they had to, and they enjoyed the benefits until it faded away.

Example 2: My boss punished me because I didn't work enough!

This should be self explanatory, but I hear it way too often. A worker, let it be an office or a factory one complains that he/she didn't get the usual compensation after a month of less than usual performance.

Jobs usually come with a base payment + performance bonus package. If you generate a given value for the company you get a bonus. This is usually cheered when they introduce it. But slowly they get used to it, then forget it entirely because they work efficiently enough to receive that reward.

The problem arises when their performance drops for a short time and they miss the threshold. And then one month worth of bonus stays in the company.

Is the company a bad guy for not paying? Is this cheating? Again, no. They gave you a reward with a given condition, which you forgot over time.

Conclusion

Both of these situation seems unfair until you inform yourself and listen to the reasons. You can complain (and I hear it more than I want), but its really pointless in these situations. Always look for reasons and decide only if you looked at all sides of an event later.