I caught myself the other day.  I found myself in a situation where most people would have gotten extremely angry, raised their voice and demanded action in their favor.  

There was no getting around it, the situation needed to be addressed and resolved but it was just a matter of how to get the desired resolution.

At the time, I really didn’t give much thought to how to resolve it, just that it needed to be resolved.  After waiting 40 minutes on multiple occasions to speak with a supervisor over a two day period, I finally got a hold of someone.

After mindful and careful choice of words with several different people, keeping my calm for 40 minutes, I decided that after all of this over two days was not getting the desired results.  I laid into the supervisor on the other end of the line when he finally picked up.  He talked over me and was rude in response, which infuriated me even further and I continued with my rant.

When all was said and done, he said he would put in a request to have another supervisor call me back.  This was over a week ago.  The call never came.  I’m not sure why I was surprised by that.

I realized afterwards that I acted how I thought I was expected to act in a situation such as this.  This company had made an error and withdrew funds from my account twice because the operator who took my payment was simply careless and not listening.  I wanted that money returned immediately.

In the long run, my display of anger was unnecessary.  They were not able to return the funds for 48 hours and there was no way around it.  If I had kept my calm as I had in the beginning I would not have let myself carry the anger after the call had ended.  Instead, because I gave into it, the anger persisted for several hours.  I had robbed myself of a pleasant night because I was so worked up.

Have you ever caught yourself in this type of situation?  I’m not sure there are many people out there who haven’t.  I have found that when I handle these types of situations in a calm manor that I am proud of my decision later, often get further and gain respect from those I am dealing with and obtain better results, walking away with a more positive attitude for the reset of the day.

I have been in the field of customer service for many years and I know that most people react this way when they are angry.  I have been trained how to handle these calls and taken more than my fair share.  But I was not proud, in retrospect that I had resorted to this.

Are you proud of the decisions you make when it comes to situations like this?  It’s okay to change how you handle them.  The choice is yours.  Don’t let it get the worst of you.  Your emotions stay with you longer than you realize.  I had acted how I thought the other person would have expected me to instead of how I know I should have.