An Open Window Into Someone Else’s World
Normally, this would be a situation I would take to my journal as a way to vent and comprehend the situation as it relates to me and others involved. This time, I decided to bring my thoughts here just so you, as the reader, could see a bit of how I process my thoughts, how I agonize in the hopes that you as the reader would either understand where I am coming from or provide your own insight.
Nevertheless, here is an open window into my world …
Just Doing My Job
For a a little over a year, I worked as a food delivery driver as a side gig. It was both profitable and eye-opening, to say the least. I learned so much about myself, and it was an opportunity for me to take a good look at how I respond in difficult and unpleasant situations.
Although I’ve worked in hospitality services before, this was a different experience. I am much older now, and my perspective on life is different. Working food service was something I hated when I was much younger. In fact, I didn’t last very long because I didn’t have the tolerance for being so thin-skinned.
For the record, some people can be so mean for no reason, and I didn’t like walking around with my heart shattered into tiny pieces from emotional pain and insults. Working the side gig was a different experience for me though. Now that I am older and have worked in a career dealing with some extremely difficult people, my take on the behaviors of others is very different.
Reminding Myself That Other People’s Stuff Is Their Stuff
One of the effects of surviving narcissistic abuse is dealing with the projection that has been thrown onto me from narcissistic personalities. Narcissists, in particular, are prone to project their behaviors and thoughts onto others. Some stuff we are just not meant to carry, and I had to learn this the hard way.
Whether it’s because of having an empathic nature or people-pleasing ways, I am prone to absorbing the emotional baggage of others. I am prone to placing myself into the shoes of others so much that I often forget to take their shoes off. It’s a habit that I developed an affinity for – not necessarily because I liked doing so though. It was mainly because of being so hyperaware and hypersensitive to the needs of others that I ended up taking on their stuff to protect myself.
I never knew how a narcissistic person was going to react towards me. So I was always preparing myself against their defensive wounds by defending myself (if that makes sense). So, if someone was in a bad mood, then I would take on that mood as well – feeling that person’s changes in mood deeply within me to the point that my entire day would be affected by the change even if I was fine prior to their changing mood. I just had a tendency to take on stuff that wasn’t my own.
An Example
I can think of several situations during food delivery stints where I found myself having to wind down into silence before I could continue on with my deliveries because of the way someone behaved towards me that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Usually the issues came from other service people who seem to have issues with delivery food drivers or customers in general.
During a food delivery stint one day, I picked up an order within a location that wasn’t my normal zone as a way to make money while heading back to my normal zone. Since every restaurant is different when it comes to food pickup protocols, I always believe it is a common courtesy to politely greet the staff prior to proceeding to pick up an order.
When I greeted a particular cashier on duty at a restaurant where I needed to pick up an order, I was met with outright hostility. I didn’t know the procedures of this restaurant nor where they kept food delivery orders for pickup. So it was necessary for me to ask so that I could do my job. Instead of a simple response, the cashier spoke to me in such a condescendingly hateful tone that I was taken aback. She actually pointed at the location of the food in an exaggerated way as if to make me out to be dumb for even asking.
Then, to make matters even more dramatic, she laughed at me and and began talking loudly with one of her colleagues about how dumb people are these days. I was too stunned to react. I could only stand in place and stare. I couldn’t even find the words to express what I was feeling. There were shards of shame that covered me, but for some reason, I instantly felt that it wasn’t my shame to feel. This cashier seemed far too hostile for the question I had asked, and her reaction to me was far too volatile for the entire situation.
When I turned to get the food, she continued talking loudly and disrespectfully about me to another staff member. I was blown away by this behavior because I didn’t even know this person … had never even seen her before until that moment. Yet, there she was talking about me and making fun of me because she had to tell me the location of the food order.
When I turned around preparing to leave, I paused to stare at the cashier. I watched her facial expressions. I watched her behavior. I saw the hate and disdain on her face as she spoke about me. I tried to understand her anger over a transaction that should have been inconsequential. We were strangers to each other enough that my initial question should not have been a trigger for her. Overall, I was confused by her negative reaction.
I could see the ugliness of her spirit, and I could she how she easily influenced her colleague to react to me with the same disrespect and disdain. For a split second, I saw a streak of fear come over her eyes because of the way I stared at her. She actually became silent. Then, despite seeing me with the food order in my hands, she asked me, “Did you not find the order?”
I stared at the cashier a moment longer and then responded, “Yes, as you a can see. I was just trying to figure out why you would speak and behave so rudely to me. Just like you, I’m trying to do my job.” Then I turned and walked away. Although I heard her make a smacking sound with her mouth, I continued towards the exit and left.
I had not realized the scene between the cashier and me had aroused an audience of onlookers. I was certain that one of the bystanders was a manager, but had it been a manager, I certainly didn’t expect that they wouldn’t intervene seeing how their employee behaved so nastily towards me. Yet, that person said and did absolutely nothing. I was dumbfounded and vowed to never return to that restaurant again.
In fact, that interaction had me so bothered that my mind replayed different scenarios. I desperately tried to understand what had happened to cause the cashier to react the way she did to me. I also thought about what I could have said and how I could have reacted if I wanted to be just as rude to the cashier as she was to me. I wished I had been quicker on my feet to crush her with my words, but I was caught off guard by what took place.
In so many instances like this one, I was too slow to respond because I was too slow to process the events. It felt like I was watching scenes from a movie. It felt like everything occurred in slow motion. I just couldn’t make sense of everything all at once. So it’s possibly that I appeared stupefied in front of this cashier because I didn’t immediately react. Maybe that was my neuordivergent brain in action. I don’t know.
Needless to say, the cashier was so outrageously rude to me that I thought I needed swift and definite justice in the matter. I wanted to be vindicated for the way she had mistreated me even though I knew I would never receive an apology from her. I needed the situation rectified and made right even though I never planned to return to that restaurant again.
So I reached out to the delivery service to let them know what happened and allowed their apology for having to encounter such a situation be the bandage I needed from which to move on and heal. Yet, I brooded over that situation for days attempting to make some sense of it. My only conclusion was that the cashier was either having a bad day or just a totally hateful person with an evil spirit.
In Reflection
Over a year later I wrote a very short review about my experience with the service at this restaurant. Although I never mentioned the specific incident with the cashier, my review was enough to get the attention of a manager who inquired about details along with the reasons I will no longer visit the restaurant. I chose not to respond and let it be water left to dry under a bridge. Besides, no one working in that restaurant at the time cared enough to speak up then. So apologies now wouldn’t really matter.
Perhaps there have been changes at this particular restaurant since then; I don’t know. However, I highly doubt that a person who behaves in such an ugly way to others will see the error of their ways and make changes as long as that type of disrespectful behavior within a working environment is condoned by others around them. That cashier was rotten to her core. That experience so tainted my view of that particular restaurant that I won’t visit any other locations either.
Either way, I had to remind myself several times over that other people’s stuff is not my stuff to carry no matter how much they project their stuff onto me. I can simply let their words and behaviors against me roll off of me, and I can move on. It’s definitely easier said than done sometimes because of the anger and rage that some people hold within them simply to release when I least expect it. Yet, I’ve learned that responding to that type of behavior can place me in danger and provoke me to get out of character, and I don’t want that type of negative energy in my life.
Other people’s stuff is their stuff. I’m going to leave it that way.
My Voice Unchained 