Life hurts alot sometimes.

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you see, right there, she apologised after getting the change. That is rather nice actually. Im not saying its ok, but she must like you a little to go to the trouble to say that to you.

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Last edited by LiendaBalla on 18 Jul 2008, 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah - she was awful, and it must have been very scary and upsetting for you. She bullied you.

I haven't been able to access Yahoo messenger lately either.

Life will get peachy again - soon I hope.

Dear LiendaBalla,

We take these things personally and are hurt by them because we have trouble looking outside ourselves. Neither you nor I know what kind of day your unpleasant customer was having, nor how much of her gasoline budget was going to something she had been told would be free.

This is not to minimize your hurt or to rationalize away her bad behavior, but to remind you that the main reason most people behave badly is because things are going badly for them. All of us who work retail have had to deal with customers who are just plain wrong but insist that they are customers and therefore always right. A few of them are bullies who enjoy terrorizing the help, but most are just folks having bad days.

The fact that she gave you any apology at all suggests that she hadn't set out to bully you, but that you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Remind yourself that you handled this situation with more dignity than she did, and be proud of that fact. You were a good person in a bad situation.



One skill that took me a long time to learn is how to be angry. I spent many years of therapy learning how to feel my emotions and act appropriately on them, and now I will generally tell a customer acting like that to please calm down and that I believe we can resolve the problem. If they continue to be abusive I will tell them to get out. My anger is what gives me the resolve to confront bad customers.

This not something that comes naturally to folks on the spectrum. You may need help learning to do this. Do some searches on the phrase "assertiveness training". It may lead you to useful information about how to handle similar situations, should they come up in the future.



I wish you great good luck and hope you feel better soon.



Sincerely,


Ikari Gendo

LiendaBalla-I'm no good at handling other people's projected hostility & bully-ish behavior. I'm sorry to read that it's been internalized by you, such that you take it out even more harshly on yourself-adding injury (self-administered physical harm) to insult (how that person treated you). Am not skilled at advice-I have been a cutter, and only was able to stop when I found other activities that worked to handle the emotional pain-and that is no simple task. "Trial-and-error" process of trying to figure out "least dangerous" or "least severe" action I can take to distract, occupy, or redirect myself-yet something that still "works", is effective, at draining/releasing tension & agony (rather than pretending it's unreal-I can't do that, nor can I repress/stifle my intense emotional surges). I've sympathy for your predicament, and wish I could think of something truly helpful to say.

Important point.
It's hard for me to derive consolation from that idea, but if I've an inkling that someone else (perhaps, a trusted friend) might "be on my side", or have a more kindly perspective on situation & my part in it, then I go to that person & ask for support. I discuss the awful interaction that just happened, how it made me feel-like it was all my fault, because usually the person being mean to me won't admit reason for behavior & instead blames it solely on me. Having sympathetic & clear-eyed second opinion on what I went through can help bolster & validate that I was not at fault for the abuse heaped upon me.

Thanks all for your posts. I do feel much better now. PMS really does enhance the mood doesn't it?