Mai Pen Rai

One of the bi-products of my research in anticipation of going to Thailand, was that I read a lot about the Thai people's notion of saving face.  In essence, the Thai people believe it is alway better to smile and never let your emotions get the best of you. Never show anger towards others, and generally live your life with a "mai pen ria" [no worries] attitude.  Above all, never raise your voice towards another in public, never argue with a patron or retail worker. And above all, treat everyone with respect, especially the poor, the street vendors, and the elderly. [I think there is no exception to this rule, a bad baseball umpire should always be heckled.] 

I made sure to take notice of this practice when I visited Thailand. At first I was skeptical. I had a hard time believing this was a real thing. Because, we have religions in this country that preach the desire for all sorts of higher than mighty attitudes in church, but only to see the hypocrisy in the parking lot as soon as services are over.  But to my surprise, it really is a thing. In the nearly two weeks I spent in Thailand, I didn't see one argument. No one honking their car horns, no one cursing at others for cutting them off in traffic, not one single incident where you could honestly see someone was upset with someone else. It was weird. And in a country of 80 million people, it was a surreal feeling to be in the middle of what I can only describe as a peaceful chaos.

When I returned back to the U.S. with in minutes of landing in Atlanta, I saw people yelling at a gage agent about some nonsense. And it wasn't more than a few minutes before I got the first, "what the fuck are you looking at" comment from a random stranger. He could have possibly been mentally unstable, but I wasn't sticking around long enough to make a proper evaluation of his particular instability.  It was a rude awakening. A slap in the face almost. Wake up James, your vacation is over, welcome back to the U.S. where everyone is pissed off and they aren't afraid to get all up in your grill about it.

But I wasn't going to let myself to accept that behavior, and ruin whatever peacefulness I brought back with me. Instead, I took notice. I started to try and understand what was going on below the surface when I witnessed these outbursts from people or myself. And more interestingly, I started to watch the behaviors of everyone else around the people that were making beef over some silly little thing. I saw many uniquely distinctive behaviors; like embarrassment, antagonism, fear, anger, and sadness. 

Well, this got me to thinking about how I should approach difficult people at the retail pharmacy where I work part-time. Normally, I just suck it up and allow the first or second shitty comment to roll off my back, but when people continue to push their stupid on me, I would start to give it back. And not always in an obvious argumentative way.  Not to say there weren't times I raised my voice at a customer, but more often than not, I would become passive aggressive and say something to the effect, "Ok, you clearly know how to do my job better than I do, so why don't you just tell me what you want me to do."  Of course this never made the situation better for either of us. They become more pissed off, and as I'm getting hot and bothered I realize I still have to deal with this ass clown who is now more irate than ever. Also I have that sinking feeling that they won, they have dragged me into their world, if even only for a moment and I'm let looking like just as much of an asshole as they are.  Martin Luther King Jr. once said, the only way you can keep someone in the gutter, is if you climb down inside with them.  More often than not, when dealing with a difficult person, I find myself in their gutter wondering how I got there.

Case in point, last week on my day off I got a text from a co-worker in the evening asking me to call a customer in the morning once a particular medication would arrive in our daily shipment. The customer had expected it the day before; but, giving it was a weekend when the order was placed, it wouldn't be arriving until the next day.  So the next morning, I printed off our invoice from the warehouse to ensure her medication would be in the shipment, and thankfully it was.  Then as soon as the order arrived, I located which tote it was packaged in, removed it, and attempted to fill her prescription. Unfortunately, her insurance's formulary list had changed since the last time she got this medication and it now required a prior authorization from her doctor before her insurance was going to pay for the nearly $1,000 monthly supply.  I called her doctor to get that ball rolling. Then called the customer with the intentions of letting her know, a. Your medication has arrived. b. it's very expensive and your insurance requires an extra step, and c. I've already initiated that extra step with your doctor, your welcome.