I understand your frustration. Out on the street, when people are rude I just ignore them or smile back (usually that’s cause my fiance is busy calling them what they are).
The worst, however, is in the office. I work as an “executive assistant” which is a nice way of saying “secretary”. It’s one of the few jobs around here that lets you leave around 5PM to go train. Being the lowest ranking member of the office, people realize there is no danger in giving you ****, so they often lay it on.
Just the other day my boss (the President) was feeling a like he needed to yell at somebody. So the guy calls me into his office to “discuss” something. I had made a mistake in mailing an item, and it arrived a few hours late (we were in the middle of moving our office, we just had a round of layoffs so I took over 3 people’s responsibilties with no raise, so mailing a video tape seemed low priority). He used that mistake to launch into a tirade about my poor attitude and not being a “mind reader” nor being “pro-active enough” (for those of you who don’t know, that’s manager speak for “I feel like a **** up, so stroke my ego every day or I’ll act like an ***"). He said everyone in the office has this problem with me. When I tried to discuss it (how can I improve? whom should I speak to about how I can better function in the office? please remember you fired all the rest of the admin staff) he freaked out. He threw things, banged his fists on the desk and said "Lyle, god it you need to let me be stern with you! You are in no position to speak this way!”
I continued to defend my postion with specific, documented examples of me going above and beyond the call of duty. At one point he became so angry he could no longer speak. He sat across from me, sweating, trying to stare me down. And I mean that…if we were in a bar, it would have been thunderdome time (two men enter, one man leaves). I had already invited him to fire me, and he didn’t want to. I asid “boss, you look like you wanna kick my ass. Really, you want me to read your mind, your mind says ‘I’d like to punch this kid in the face’”. Needless to say he continued to stare at me.
So I decided to talk him down. I had no problem matching his agression, so I decided to try to turn it to my advantage (I am soon going on a 20 day honeymoon, and I just didn’t feel like looking for temp work). I took about 20 min of soothing secretary speak, but he chilled out, and even sent an email around to everyone in the company thanking me for my efforts.
Never in my life did I think anyone would have the audacity to try to use me as their whipping boy. I have never, ever been so fundamentaly insulted. It was a battle of minds, and through force of will, I won. I’d say that was the first time I really applied my aikido training in real life.
It’s hard to keep it all inside. do u have a punchbag or something? u can take it out on that pretty well…
I always put my foot in it so to speak, but never mind 