Mondays
I can't really decide how I feel about my job. Just when I'm starting to think "y'know, this is kinda fun" I get some asshole customer or some asshole employee to make me descend back into the dark depths of misanthropy (that was WAAAAY more dramatic than I meant it to sound).
But, so far, I've managed to flood the place at LEAST 8 times, start a fire twice, and explode two things (that aren't generally considered explosive).
I'm wondering when "I'm new" excuse expires and becomes merely "I'm really just an incompetent idiot".
Speaking of idiocy, there was this one really bitchy old lady who came up to the counter and asked "What's a small and what's a medium?"
So me, being unusually slow today, said "Ummm, the small is our smallest size and the medium is the middle size."
It turns out, she was asking "What's a small COMPARED to a medium?" And she didn't let me feel any better about being an idiot. She lectured me on what she meant with barely concealed insults directed at my (admittedly at the moment absent) intelligence. I mean, most people might have been polite and laughed a little and apologized (even though it wasn't their fault) and I could have made a self-effacing comment and that would have been that. But no. Bitchy lady said something like "I know what a small is. I want you to show me the two together." The fact that I could barely hear her anyway (she talked so damned softly and my hearing really isn't the best) and me asking her to repeat herself every sentence didn't improve either my image or my confidence...
Which, yeah, as before said, I should have known that's what she wanted. And after I realized that she made me look like an idiot and was pretty arrogant over said achievement, my mood just shifted. Gone was my fake pleasant expression that I put on for the 8 hours I work. I think I have this mental tendency to project the mood I feel from others. If a person is super happy and just overwhelmingly nice, there's absolutely no way I can not mirror that state of mind. The same goes for rudeness, sarcasm, excitement, etc (though not for anger, strangely enough). So the rest of the transaction process with this lady had me being just as snooty as I could be without resorting to overt rudeness (kind of reminded me of the stereotypical British butler...). Then, like two seconds later, I get this really nice customer with her son and, thank goodness, that ugly attitude was wiped away and back was my pleasant-mask.
I don't at all mind affecting a pleasant/bland facade at work. But I would like it if, when interacting with me as a stranger, other people would be considerate enough to not be assholes.
Though that should pretty much go without saying.