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flies in the ointment

Ecclesiastes 10:1 (ESV)

Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off a stench;
so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor.

Side Note: The KJV translates perfumer as "apothecary", which can also mean pharmacist. Growing up I thought this passage was referring to bugs in your medicine. 

Yesterday toward the end of my work day I received a phone call that made my heart drop to the pits of my stomach. One of my precincts (I oversee 8 polling places) had an irate voter that was refusing to leave the premises and I needed to get to that place as quickly as possible. Thankfully the phone call came (as I was pulling in the parking lot) that the voter had finally left. I headed back to finish the assessments I was doing when the call came, but my heart was hurting for my workers. No one likes to deal with an irate person, especially at the end of a very long day. And when that person is irate over something errant and irrational, it only makes it worse.

So imagine my surprise when I received a call back from that precinct saying the voter had returned, after closing, and apologized to all the workers. He had gone home and re-read the newspaper article where he had gotten his "facts" and realized He had misread the paper!
Despite the absurdity of it all and the fear/horror as well as frustration those poll workers faced, I was a little bit impressed the guy came back to apologize. That is not something we see very often. Actually, in eight years of working elections, I don't think that's ever happened. While this the first situation I've ever had escalate to the point we were one step away from calling the police, there are countless situations where we've listened to people fuss or rant over things that are incorrect or that we have no control over. I wouldn't wish yesterday's scenario on any poll worker. But it was quite pleasant after hearing "the voter came back as we were closing the polls" to hear the soothing words "he went home and read the paper, realized he was wrong, and was coming back to apologize."

While that dude's choice of cologne still stinks, at least now there's a whiff of pleasantness about him.
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