It's not fair

I hear this a lot. Not always in those exact words, but I hear a lot of people outright or indirectly voice their concern about fairness. Everything needs to be fair. Raiding should be fair, loot should be fair, recruiting should be fair, and everyone should be fair.

Specifically, I am talking about people getting along in a guild. It's not always fair. In some kind of utopian world, everyone gets along with everyone else and no one ever dislikes anyone else. I'm not certain humans can handle that. People like to think they are open minded, but they don't want to hang out and be friends with a bunch of people who act differently or think differently. Maybe people can do that for a little bit, but eventually, people just want to be with other people with similar values, ideas, behaviors. It's not heartening as a leader to see that, but it's how people work in societies. At least in a guild, the idea of race and economic class have a minimal impact.

If there's a person in your guild that a handful of members hate, it's a ticking drama bomb. It doesn't matter if that person has not broken a single rule and has been a model member of the guild. In the end, a wall has been built and who knows which side will end up outside the guild.

It's a two way street. And this has everything to do with guild recruiting and looking for a guild. I saw a good metaphor involving shoes (on the Guild Relations Forum). Guilds are like shoes. No one blames the person if a shoe doesn't fit. And no one blames the shoe for not fitting. You just go look for another pair of shoes that do fit. You don't take the shoe apart and try to make it bigger or smaller. You don't cut your toes off to fit in the shoe. The same is very similar to guilds and members. It doesn't matter who is the shoe and who is the foot. The fact is, even a shoe that seems to fit might not grow with your foot. Or, the foot might need more arch support later in life.

But, for some reason, the guild is a bunch of elitist morons, or that one member was just a jerk. I suppose people like to reassure themselves that they are right, they are not wrong, and the other side was wrong. That's not fair.