Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Anger Management

I love the idea of anger being something that motivates people, but personally anger makes me do the opposite, it makes me run and hide. I like to stuff it down, deep down and forget it's a valid emotion. An emotion worth expressing and acknowledging.
I get pretty frustrated in my work environment. Anyone who has worked in customer service is well aware the kind of bizarre, entitled, and utterly illogical behavior that people tend to exhibit when money is involved. To make matters worse, my computer crashes/freezes at least three times a day (not exaggerating); sometimes I lose work, but most of the time a task that should take me five minutes can stretch into hours because my equipment won't cooperate. Then there are the co-workers, this is probably true of most work places, but when I tell my friends about the situations I encounter with certain people at my job it often leads to talk about sitcoms, as in "this would be a great sitcom material if it wasn't real or this would be hilarious if it wasn't actual, real life situation." (Cast of characters include the boss' self-centered, incompetent daughter, the Moroccan accountant who has some of the worst hygiene of an adult I have ever encountered, also likes to blame his problems on everyone but himself, the slight anti-Semitic girl who brings up my Judaism in a weird way every time she can and straight out lies or exaggerates about everything to the point madness, then there is the manager who knows very little about the day to day operations of the office, and cares more about making everyone feel good instead producing good work results, add to the mix techno phobic boss, and a second boss who makes wildly inappropriate statements constantly and is a huge narcissist.)
Basically, there is a lot to be dissatisfied about at my job. Usually I deal with it by slamming the phone and swearing a lot - this creates a pretty negative environment. I used to hide it better, but somewhere around last few months when I was told I can't be compensated the way I think I should be, I started to not give a damn. But it still bugs me all the negativity that spews out of my mouth. Yesterday, I decided to just not say anything, I acknowledged the anger to myself and then moved on without verbalizing and it felt pretty good. I had mistaken the need to shout or slam the phone as the only way to experience anger, and yet just by saying to myself "well that sucked" it makes the anger that much more manageable and little bit more motivating.

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