Why Do You Act Like That?

I was in the grocery store the other day, waiting in line at the customer service counter to make a return when I overheard a conversation between a store employee and a customer.

The customer had just asked an employee who did not work in customer service if they accepted utility bills in that department.  The employee said he did not work in that area so he did not know, but proceeded to ask someone at the customer service counter for him and got an answer.

The customer did not accept the employee’s reasoning as to why he did not know if they accepted utility bills.  In fact, as he wandered off, the customer said, “It would take me about 5 minutes to learn that, if I worked here, then if someone else asked about it, I would know.”

In other words, be willing to expand your knowledge of the job in order to help people.

I understood what the customer was saying, but in defense of the employee, I can also see how in a big retail grocery store, it would be hard to know such things outside of one’s own department.

Regardless, the customer could not let it go and he wandered off, re-stating his position and complaining within earshot of everyone around.

Then, the employee proceeded to tell another employee about the situation and they had a discussion which, although I could not hear it very well, ended in some cursing and complaining about the customer.

Oh my.

Interestingly, in the end, the customer wandered back over where I was standing, and he was still talking about it, but this time, I think he mumbled to no one in particular, some sort of an apology, or an empathetic comment.

This conversation plays right into something I have been thinking about lately.  What makes anger and impatience the reflexive response for some people while others seem to have patience as a default mode?  

If you are in the latter category, good for you.  But for those of you who are in the former group, let’s talk about it.  You can change.  You really can, and the world will be all the better for it.

Sometimes this kind of a response is ingrained in us.  In that case, we may have a lifetime of training to undo. Maybe our life experiences in general have given us a default mode that reacts with indignation or cynicism.  Or, maybe we were raised that way. (A friend of mine has spent a lifetime trying not to be his dad—that’s a lot of work.)

Clearly, I’m not saying this is going to be easy, but with some self-awareness, it can be done.

Does it seem like everyone’s an idiot lately?  That nobody does anything right? That people never do what they are supposed to do, or how YOU would do it?

Is this your default mode?  How do you get out of it? How do you change YOU?

Well, it begins with a little soul searching.  Why do you respond the way you do?  That’s an important question to explore.

Here’s a thought.  Maybe at the bottom of your behavior, after you have done an honest self-analysis, you might discover that it is very simple:  you did not get your own way.

Think about the last time you got mad.  Was it because someone did not act like YOU thought they should?  That they did not do it the way YOU would have? 

What does that say about your why?

It is possible that not everyone is actually an idiot, or annoying, you know. 

Maybe they just seem annoying because they are not living up to your standards and expectations, a ruler they may not even be aware of, let alone realize they are being measured against.

Perhaps, rather than measuring others against our own standards and expectations, which will be impossible for them to satisfy anyway, we would be wise to look at our own words and actions and measure them against Christ’s.

The quickest way to disarm our default behavior, if it is not good and we want to change it, is to ask ourselves, “Are my words and actions Christ-like?”

Janet Cassidy

Janetcassidy.com