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redfarmer

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When I was a manager at a Wendy's fast food restaurant a few years ago, I had soft drinks thrown at me on two different occasions, and I think a box of french fries once.  Some people take fast food damn seriously.  :lol:

(I should probably note that I did not have things thrown at me due to anything I did wrong, but just because some customers are completely nuts. :P )

That's interesting. Wendy's was my first job and I worked there for close to four years. One of the worst experiences of my life!

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Redfarmer, perhaps, if possible, it is good for you to regard the interactions with these customers not primarily as a part of your work but as a source of self-growth.

Grow by experimenting with the suggestions you´ve got here that you find worth trying.

When you are going to work, you might ask yourself "In what way will I grow as a person today because of these customer interactions?" and when you leave work you might ask yourself "In what way have I grown today?" and try to give a concrete answer to that question. Taking notes before the event and after helps me in such matters - I get more of a sense of producing concrete results when wrighting it down.

You might also make it a goal to grow in some aspect every week by doing this. The weeks you can´t name in what aspect you have grown, use the frustration or whatever feeling it evokes the next week to intensify your effort to grow as a person.

I like a book by Viktor Frankl (Victor?), about creating a meening for your life. He started wrighting on that book, I think, when he was in a Holocaust camp during World War II (I´m not saying "Shut up and work!"). He found out that the survivors had in common that each of them had managed to find a meaning with their life when being prisoners in those horrible camps. Although some survived by working for the nazis and tormenting the other prisoners. Finding a meaning should be the better or the only option.

Yes, what did Howard Roark do when he was in the cold professionally? He worked his guts out in a quarry. I wonder how you could be inspired by that, if you´re for the moment is doing the best of the worst alternatives.

Good luck!

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Develop a sense of humor, it is easy to smile at a illrational, over demanding customer or coworker if you imagine them as a baby wareing a diaper, sucking their thumb while throwing a temper tantrum.

This advice worked for me today. It was great! I first came in contact with the technique in a Adam Sandler movie, he was playing football, but today was the first time I used it. Instead of getting annoyed I had a fun time. I did laugh inside and smiled.

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Develop a sense of humor, it is easy to smile at a illrational, over demanding customer or coworker if you imagine them as a baby wareing a diaper, sucking their thumb while throwing a temper tantrum.

This advice worked for me today. I first came in contact with the technique in a Adam Sandler movie, he was a football player, but today was the first time I tried it. It was genuinely fun and healthy to interact with the two persons today instead of annoying and stressing. I think I was the one having fun today, the two persons I interacted was probably not having fun about my new behaviour. :P

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I am para-phrasing.."Emotions are power, emotions are exclusively yours, allowing other to dictate your emotions, give them power over you"

When ever I was confronted with situations as you described. I always remembered that phase, and being the selfish person  I am, refused to allow anyone to take control of ME.  I am the only person that can make me angry, I have to allow it.  Don't know if that helps, but it works for me, most of the time.

Is this to not get angry without side-effects, or is it to get angry but repressing it and problably having side-effects like increased risk of problem with the heart, or is it to get angry but postponing it and doing 20 push-ups the first moment you get a couple of minutes of privacy or something?

If it is the first alternative, I don´t see how I can do that. If possible, explain further!

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This advice worked for me today. I first came in contact with the technique in a Adam Sandler movie, he was a football player, but today was the first time I tried it. It was genuinely fun and healthy to interact with the two persons today instead of annoying and stressing. I think I was the one having fun today, the two persons I interacted was probably not having fun about my new behaviour. :)

That's some advice I really need to learn how to take. I'm learning how to take irrationality, though. It's funny because it seems that, in the process, you become more rational, too.

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I'm learning how to take irrationality, though. It's funny because it seems that, in the process, you become more rational, too.

That´s a thing I need to do. I´ll probably have to start to work on me (I hope that was not improper wrighting) to wanting that (?).

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I'm learning how to take irrationality, though. It's funny because it seems that, in the process, you become more rational, too.

That´s a thing I need to do. I´ll probably have to start to work on me (I hope that was not improper wrighting) to wanting that (?).

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When I was a manager at a Wendy's fast food restaurant a few years ago, I had soft drinks thrown at me on two different occasions, and I think a box of french fries once.  Some people take fast food damn seriously.  :)

(I should probably note that I did not have things thrown at me due to anything I did wrong, but just because some customers are completely nuts. :P )

In a rational culture, you would be allowed to beat these people and throw them out onto the pavement.

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In a rational culture, you would be allowed to beat these people and throw them out onto the pavement.

Well, I didn't beat them, but I did tell them to get the hell out of my store (or drive-thru, as the case may have been) and not come back. Man, the stories I could tell about some of our customers. :)

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This is off topic, but I just felt like sharing my weakness for Wendy's. I know it's bad for me, but I LOVE the Triple w/cheese. I have 'em a couple times a week. Wendy's is my favorite!

Yes, the free food was one of the best perks of working there. I love the classics too, but my favorite was the grilled chicken with cheese. I would eat one of those almost every day. Their new grilled chicken supreme or whatever it's called now isn't as good, IMO. I don't eat there very often anymore.

And if it's any consolation, their burgers are probably less bad for you than most other fast food places.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Red, your primary problem as I see it,  is your unselfish ability,  to allow others to take control of YOUR emotions...i.e. they are irrational, so you get angry.

During my time in the Navy.  I attended several leadership management courses.  I don't recall where this statement originated from, however, in one of them,  I  heard this statement. 

I am para-phrasing.."Emotions are power, emotions are exclusively yours, allowing other to dictate your emotions, give them power over you"

When ever I was confronted with situations as you described. I always remembered that phase, and being the selfish person  I am, refused to allow anyone to take control of ME.  I am the only person that can make me angry, I have to allow it.  Don't know if that helps, but it works for me, most of the time.

But Sailor, if emotions are non-volitional, how does one gain such control over the arising of one's emotion :) ? Did you check the actions/mindsets that led to the arising of said emotions?

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But Sailor, if emotions are non-volitional, how does one gain such control over the arising of one's emotion :) ? Did you check the actions/mindsets that led to the arising of said emotions?

I haven't seen Sailor around here in a while, so I'll answer.

Emotions are an involuntary reaction to a comparison between external stimulus and one's own hierarchy of values.

They are volitional only in the sense that one can choose one's own values. If you experience an emotion which contradicts the values you consciously accept, then you have yet to integrate them on a subconscious level.

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But Sailor, if emotions are non-volitional, how does one gain such control over the arising of one's emotion ;) ? Did you check the actions/mindsets that led to the arising of said emotions?

One also has a choice of how he uses his emotions. Does he treat them as tools of cognition (at least implicitly) by allowing them to influence his thought processes and actions? Or does he simply allow himself to experience them and strive to understand them, but refuse to act on emotional impulse?

I think it was meant, in this context, not that one controls his emotions, but that he controls his response to them.

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