Never cared for it when people at work would excuse their bad behavior, or other people's, by citing introversation and extraversion. Sally's a loudmouth who takes over every conversation? Oh, that's OK, she's a "flaming E," you know. Joe acts grumpy and put-upon every time I need to ask him something? Oh, that Joe, he's such an introvert!
No, they aren't. They are, respectively, a bully and a grouch.
Amethyst
I agree - using personality types as a crutch to excuse bad behavior is not what they are intended for, IMO. They're intended to help us understand ourselves better. This reminds me of an incident in which I was the one behaving badly and though it happened 2 or 3 years ago, it still causes me embarrassment to this day when I think about it.
It involved an ex co-worker and her husband. She is very extroverted, and often the instigator of social get-togethers - she's very much the organizer. In contrast, I am a big introvert and to make the combination worse, she doesn't seem to be very good at reading unspoken signals from others. She can come across as very persistent to people like me, who feel the need to limit our social interactions. Just to make things even worse for me, I often act extroverted in public, so people often get the wrong idea about me.
After I moved several hundred miles away, she and her husband (who travel a lot) would regularly travel through my area and I'd hear from her, asking if we could meet up. We did do this a couple of times and the first time, it was quite nice to see her. The second time, I didn't really want to meet up, but decided to go ahead and meet them for lunch anyway. I couldn't think of a way to politely decline, and it seemed anti-social and really not a nice thing to do (especially as she was such a nice and well-intentioned person). I should have trusted my instincts as that meeting didn't go well. I usually know ahead of time if a particular social situation isn't going to go well, and I felt so out of place during our meeting that it just
had to have been obvious to them. She and her husband talked their way through the whole thing, while I awkwardly stammered my way through part-sentences. It is the most disjointed I have felt in a social situation in a very long time.
Then, a few months later, she let me know that they were coming through the area again and she and her husband wanted to meet up with me for lunch in a local bar. I really didn't want to go, but it was just down the street from me, and I just couldn't think of a polite way to decline without causing her offense. The more I thought about it, the fewer solutions I came up with, so I did something that, for me, is quite out of character - I froze up and simply didn't reply to her.
I knew that wasn't the right way to handle it. Shortly after they had passed through the area, I received a message from her husband telling me that while it was perfectly OK to be an introvert, what I had done was rude, and his wife (my ex co-worker) was very disappointed that she hadn't been able to see me. He was right, I had been rude, and I felt awful about it. However, this sort of thing happens to me from time to time - I, a big introvert, comes across a big extrovert who can't read my social cues, and things get weird. Sometimes I think it is a bit odd that at the age of 50, I still haven't completely figured out how to deal with situations like this, though I am getting better at it (I think).
I know this wasn't a good example of what you were talking about Amethyst, as I wasn't using my personality type as an excuse for my bad behavior. It was more of a case of an unfortunate combination of personality types leading me into a situation that I still haven't gotten very good at dealing with, and acting badly as a result. It's been in my mind ever since and I guess I just needed to get it off my chest.
This is one reason I enjoy the company of my cats so much - there are never any awkward social situations to deal with