Amy screwed up. She unintentionally offended a client and still feels terrible about it. Yes, she's human and that day, definitely not up to par. The client complained to the boss and the boss corrected her.  If Amy could have dug a hole and crawled in, she would have. She did her best to apologize and wishes there was more she could do to set things right. 

I sympathized. This has happened to everyone at some point in their lives, me included. I told her that but I'm not sure it helped.

So what happened?  Amy doesn't know.  There must have been some kind of short circuit between her brain and her mouth.

Since it is not in Amy's nature to be short or sharp with anyone, something must have interfered with her edit switch. Together we dissected the event and discovered that she answered the client's question, fully expecting a joking rejoinder. Somehow her attempt at humor didn't come across.  It is impossible to know now if her tone or her expression belied her words.  Her boss let it pass.  Amy isn't sure the customer has or ever will.  She will carry this with her for a long time, mentally flogging herself every time that customer name appears in front of her.

Some days we are masters of our words; on others, we can barely put a noun and verb together.  We see it in social media all the time. Tweets are either 140 characters of genius or the tweeter is back-pedaling because what she wrote made no sense.

Communication is an exchange. It is spoken, written, performed, or displayed. No matter how earnestly we try, sometimes we will not be successful in conveying our thoughts or intentions. At that point, we have to be willing to apologize and try again. A great deal may ride on our ability to have others understand us.  Everything from world peace to inner peace.

Anger Mangement and Abe Lincoln

A friend recently attended a workshop in which the topic was managing emotion in the workplace. The biggest issue for everyone was dealing with anger.

Anger invades much of our lives today. We feast on it like vampires feed on blood.  The more anger in our lives, the more we seek out. We are addicted to it. It is so pervasive in our society that courses are taught in managing it.

Think about it. Ratings on most reality shows are driven by the "villain." That contestant gets angry, throws a temper tantrum, and the ratings go up. It doesn't matter whether the show is about people in the jungle or women in New York. The formula is the same. Get angry - get ratings.

Unfortunately, that carries over into everything we do. To get what we want and force things to go our way, we pitch a fit. We lay on our horns when we are driving, we yell into our cell phones at restaurants, and we don't tolerate differing opinions.

Abe Lincoln is popular right now.  Perhaps we should respond to him, not as a movie star, but as a man who was surrounded by angry people. The country, literally torn in two by anger, was the worst of it but close to him, the men within his cabinet were angry with themselves, their personal lot, the endless war they thought would be over in months. His wife was despondent over the loss of another child and his eldest son was a stranger.

Lincoln said,"Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."  In other words, sustained anger is a choice. We decide to be angry all the time.  

Strong emotion interferes with our ability to reason and obstructs our logic. When we argue with friends or family true communication is non-existent. We don't say what we mean and we shut out what others try to express. 

If we follow Lincoln's advice and elect to be happier, what might we accomplish?  Perhaps we won't be able to do things as astounding as pushing the 13th Amendment through, but who knows? If we decide to be happier, what might we hear or do that could change our lives?

No Talking to Big Communications Company

Thanks to a certain large telecommunications company, I haven't been able to communicate for nearly two weeks.  Following two snow storms, the connection went from bad static to stoney silence. We had no land line and no Internet.  Thanks to smart phones, we were still connected but I wasn't able to update my blogs or perform some of the other tasks that are part of my writing life.

All our cables and lines are buried and, after 25 years in the ground, it's a safe bet that they are deteriorating. About ten years ago, ComEd had to replace their line. It's no surprise that water is now leeching into the phone line and shorting out the connection. Any non-techie could easily figure out what happened by the sound and by the timing. AT&T has a unique way of dealing with these issues.  They don't.

I tried to call their repair department but got nowhere. A visit to the Web site gave me detailed instructions about disconnecting wires in the box on the exterior of the building and using a phone to determine whether the problem was inside or outside the dwelling. We live in a multi-unit townhouse. There is no way we were going mess around in the exterior phone box and risk causing problems for our neighbors. In addition, we weren't about to go slogging about in three feet of snow to find a box that I suspect isn't there. When we moved in, the phone man worked out by the street.  He wasn't near the building.

So the giant communication company, AT&T, doesn't communicate. It is virtually impossible to speak to a human being and get real help.  The upshot is that we switched our service to a competitor. While this competitor is notorious for bad service, after being without phone or Internet for more than a week, we didn't have much choice. At least Comcast has human beings working for it. And while we got Internet magically this morning (another story), the phone still is not connected. A technician is due this afternoon. I can hardly wait to see if this giant communication company is any better at communication than the other one.

Sadly, there are few options for the consumer. In an age so dependent on communication, the providers of the technology are poor at it themselves because they don't have to be good at it.  We have to pay them anyway.