Self-pity is defined as a feeling of excessive unhappiness about one's problems. I never sat around thinking "Woe is me. This is dreadful. Why have I been picked on? Why is life so unfair?" I tend to take most problems in my stride, solving them as best I can and moving on.
So my bed-sit landlords never did any repairs, never installed central heating and never got rid of the pervading damp in the building. I cursed the company freely and then just got on with my life. So one of my bookshop managers micromanaged everyone and expected us all to work feverishly and not waste time nattering. We just called him an authoritarian arsehole and downed tools the moment he went out for a fag break.
In fact my father was much more prone to self-pity than I am. He would be fuming for hours over a boss who constantly messed him around and jumped on the smallest error. He couldn't accept that some bosses can be pernickety sods and you just have to deal with it. If he expected to have a perfect boss who never upset him, he wasn't living in the real world.
Of course if my life had been one awful disaster after another, I daresay I would have struggled to avoid self-pity and I would seriously have asked, why have I had it so bad? It would be hard to simply carry on and tell myself "C'est la vie"'.
