Even to the barely sensitive there is an oppressing amount of negativity swirling around at work now adays... As smoothly as I have tried to not add to the enviornment up at work, Even I am starting to notice lately that my usually calm and easy going demeanor is growing some sharp edges.

I have been snappy, snarky, smart assed, and downright insensitive at times lately.

As troubled as I was... As shaky as my mental stability was trying to be... as wide as the extremes decided to get today...

I calmed down...

I focused...

I accepted a call from one of my agents that I knew could be the next call that would just push every single damn one of my buttons all at once.

I breathed...

And I spoke to a Lady that I had been told by my agent that she had been cussing her out and wouldn't give her merchant identification information and was being very abusive. I am peripherally aware that this agent looks to me for understanding and is always a constant test to my patience (Why oh why did someone not warn me not to ask for more patience before I had already done it?), but I pause for several beats... Listening to the rhythym of my heart and after letting her understand my reservations about taking the call, tell her to transfer it to my phone.

She very much attempts to be calm, and I appreciate the attempt. It tells me that on some level she does want to receive assistance, not just vent some repressed anger... (Which is some of what I am so wont to do, but can be so hard to do without causing some kind of injury... to self or others.)

I carefully and calmly talk to her... reminding myself to breath as necessary... Let her have a space to go back into the anger and through it to the tears, around the edges of the issues and to the confession of fears.

All the while... quietly, occasionally... as gently as I can remind her, It's okay... no matter how bad it is, I can fix the part of the equation that is making her panic...

I didn't lay out all of the details of the immediate future but I assured her that no matter what happened, I would see that her transactions would get processed and her panic over losing over ten thousand dollars worth of transactions being run when her bosses expected their money and thereby losing her job.

I spent nearly 40 minutes, probably more, ignoring all those around me who needed assistance... who knows how many other experiences were impacted by my not being available... But that wasn't important right then.

I was somebody's life line... Her world as she knew it was crumbling and I could carry her through it.

No fear, no desire... just perfectly in the moment and taking care of this one person. No thoughts of what I would rather be doing, only barely glancing on the call center statistics that show that either our group is in very serious trouble, or the Full Moon was having a definite sway to the day... *grin* Most likely both.

And you know what, we never had to resort to the worst case scenario... We got it working. Not necessarily the "optimal" or "appropriate" way, but she was able to process her transactions on her machine and rest easy knowing that what she envisioned as disaster had been averted.

And the only reason why at that particular moment NCE (not quite NEC but it better be careful) almost drove this wonderful Lady who is going to be married in less than a month and start a new wonderful chapter of her life into a psychotic break was because someone... somewhere in the chain of things should have been paying a little less attention to the numbers and a little more attention to the people on the other end of the phone.

Which is a sin that I have to say that in the abstract that I am just as guilty of.

Which is why I know that it can be turned around... A seed can be planted...

Because even in the midst of distraction, I can sometimes remember what truly is important.

Me, the person who only took this job because I wanted to not have to think for awhile... (Tech support job... Do you feel any irony in that? It's not an attempt to brag or anything like that... But there was no irony for me. And I am willing to try and teach that understanding if anyone is really interested, but you have to ask in a meaningful way... and truly be interested in the answer in order to be able to hear it)