A mocker resents correction, he will not consult the wise, A mocker is one who ridicules, one who points out by criticism or cynicism what he perceives to be faults. There was a lot of mockery at my old workplace. I set a task for myself to keep from indulging in mockery, to keep myself from sharing in fault finding. “The discerning heart seeks knowledge but the mouth of the fool feeds on folly" In keeping myself from the mockery and complaining mentioned above, I had to look to the essential good of every task I did. I thought I should write down the "essential purpose" of every task and "silver lining" of every apparent bad situation.
“A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel". When People were getting angry, I needed to be patient. I needed to be the one to find the solution, the one who can find the solution to both sides, if I could.
“Folly delights the man who lacks judgment, but a man of understanding keeps a straight course.” Sometimes I found myself in this situation when I was working a software problem. For example I might be using Access to make a report. I wanted the software to do a task, like copy in some fields from a spreadsheet rather than typing them in myself. I would spend a whole day in folly (trying to make the software do the work) rather than keeping a straight course simply typing the report I needed while giving up on the rabbit trail of the software solution. In that situation I was delighting myself in folly. Working the software was more fun than the actual task I was using it for. I could have honored God by honoring my work by sticking to the task I started with, saying the course.
In spite of the above, what a wonderful privilege God had given me. At work I received challenging tasks, new ones all the time. I was given a free hand about how to achieve them. I could even go about them in a wrong way, as when I spent too much time on the software. I was given wonderful and interesting tools to work with. I traveled to many interesting places in the country. We did real work, useful work, national defense work, not merely entertainment work.
