oyceter. Things I have learned from work that apply to personal life stuff (Reply)

or, Murphy's Law Plus Machiavelli in a Care Bear Outfit

Most of these I figured out the hard way, so the you's are actually notes to myself.

Waking up grumpy and wallowing in grumpiness means that the gods of the cubicle will have you a) antagonize everyone in your meeting, b) run late the entire day and c) spill coffee on yourself. On the other hand, it's not like one chooses to be grumpy, and sometimes, a crappy day is a crappy day.

Being nice but firm with people means they will actually listen to you. This is sort of nice if you've spent most of your life never standing up for yourself, and sometimes gives you delusions of grandeur that occasionally make you feel like telling people to do funny things like squiggle the mouse pointer around, just to see if they will.

Figuring out your Definitely-Not's, Maybes, and Sure-What-the-Heck's is helpful, but only if you don't go around sticking every single little thing in Definitely-Not because then people will just get grumpy. Otherwise, this is very helpful to make people listen to you!

Explaining what you're trying to do to people and phrasing it in a way that applies to them and is shiny and exciting for some reason makes them want to help. Much more than just saying, "Go do this for me, it will help me out."

The one day you have to do a million different things at the same time will inevitably be the day every single person on the planet needs your help and/or opinion. Really, there is no good way to do this outside of hiding under your desk and trying to breathe.

Personal problems and work problems will always collide at the worst possible time.

People really aren't asking you a million questions to irritate you. Try hard not to snap off their heads. Even though it is really tempting

Being a jerk to someone will always, always, always come back to bite you in the ass. Always. Being polite even while seething mad will pay off in the long run.

Not telling people what irritates you ensures that they will keep doing the thing that irritates you. Amazingly, a really good way to cut down on irritation is to actually bring up the irritating behavior or problem in a non-yelly way and come up with a solution that benefits everyone. (I probably should have learned this ten years ago, but... better late than never?)

If you are trying not to lose your temper, sometimes it helps to separate intentions from actions. It doesn't really change the action, but at least you can sort of feel better about the person and just focus on fixing the action instead of grousing about the person.

Or vice versa? I forget, sometimes the person is just mean but manages to stumble into doing something nice. Mostly I like to pretend that people are trying to be nice and help in their own way, because it helps me deal better.

Oh dear. I fear I am completely Machiavellian, although I swear, I don't think that people should be nice to other people just to get what they want. It just happens to be a nifty side effect, sometimes.

Sadly, much of this seems to involve me trying not to snap at people. Le sigh.