A high-powered New York attorney went viral recently, but for all the wrong reasons.

Handheld cell-phone video of Aaron Schlossberg spread like wildfire on Facebook after an encounter he had with a cashier at a Fresh Kitchen eatery in Manhattan. Schlossberg was angry at the cashier for speaking to coworkers—and other restaurant patrons—in Spanish.

In the footage, Schlossberg can be seen loudly and angrily berating several employees who appear to be of Hispanic descent, implying they are undocumented workers receiving public assistance, which he resents contributing toward as a taxpayer. Toward the video's end, he threatens them with deportation by calling Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE).

Schlossberg was recorded by a fellow patron in the store who felt his behavior was rude and uncalled for, and within hours he had been identified online and his business pages on Yelp and other review sites had been deluged with negative reviews.

To make things worse, savvy internet sleuths pointed out an important tidbit from his business website—it advertises consultations in Hebrew, French, Chinese … and yes, Spanish.

Potential Preaching Angles: When we attack others for trivial things, we reveal our own depravity first. Kindness is an easy way to generate goodwill, and hypocrisy is an easy way to squander it.