Fuse

Sometimes I have a short one.  Ask my boys.

Do you ever get in the space where you're in a situation, and pressure is steadily building, you're feeling that the bubble is getting bigger and it's going to burst unless you can get yourself out of that situation quickly.  Say, for example, you're at the mall, shopping for birthdays/fathers day/school projects/clothes you don't need and you're feeling frazzled, you're feeling guilty about spending so much money, your hands are being squished by all the bags you are carrying and you have soya sauce down your white shirt after scoffing half an unsatisfactory sushi roll.  All you want to do is get to the car, turn on 2GB, and drive to the sanctuary of your home.

Relief.....

But when you get home and there is a message about something urgent like your electricity/home loan/telephone account.  You call back immediately, racking your brain for whatever bill you've forgotten to pay so you can sort it STAT before The Husband finds out.  Only the account is in your husband's name.  And the smarmy person on the other end of the phone is UNABLE to deal with you, "Sorry, I can only speak with the authorised person on the account, and that is your husband, not you".  And you've gone through some hideous phone system to finally talk to that  person.

The last straw.

Here's a moment - a brief nanosecond where you get to decide your course of action.  Will you (a) let her have it or (b) be a nice person and forgive and forget.

Interestingly, I had two instances of this yesterday.
Sarcasm from a telephone call centre person gets an instant (a) from me.  And I had a nasty dose of telephone sarcasm flung on me.  Some would suggest it may have been warranted (it was only a few minutes that I ranted on about how my husband never has time to call me during the day, let alone wait 20 minutes on the phone after speaking to 3 different people from some building society to update our details so I could deal with the urgent matter), when she hit me with a "Well it appears he has CHOSEN to only have the property in HIS name for whatever reasons".  OK honey, I get it, YOU DON'T LIKE ME.

The second instance, was once again, an unexpected snippet of snippiness from a shop person who I thought we were having a pleasant enough exchange.  I let it go. The element of surprise was a good ploy.

I think I react too often, I love the idea of a mini battle, of rolling my sleeves up and getting self righteous.  I totally blame my time in the corporate world for this where my job was to sort of think up ideas for keeping the customers happy.  I think we should expect no less than excellent customer service.

And I bet you wouldn't have to rack your memory to far back to remember an instance where you were treated poorly by someone at the other end of a phone or the other side of the counter.

But my moral of this story, for me, is that it actually felt nicer to walk away, to let it go.
 I think I need to be a little more selective in choosing the battles that are worth fighting for.
And not choosing all of them.