I am a bureaucrat. It’s not necessarily something I’m proud of; when asked what I do for a living, I usually offer up some variation of “IT guy”, which is what sticks. But basically, I’m a cog in a giant bureaucracy with a fearsome reputation for being unpleasant to deal with, even, as is the case most of the time, I’m brushing up against other cogs in this giant behemoth of a machine.

I’m doing a lot of bumping up against other machine parts lately; we released a new update to a software tool this week, and my name was the one included on all the documentation. My phone and email have been pinging constantly. As an introvert, I’m exhausted.

Almost all of the interactions I’m dealing with are from people coming to me spoiling for a fight, because something’s not working the way they expect. Usually, this is a case of them not reading the instructions, or not paying attention to the training, or some other flavor of what we in the business call “user error” or, more diplomatically, “a training issue.”

I have but one tactic that works to make these situations bearable: be unfailingly pleasant and understanding. It’s an all too uncommon reaction to these situations in this environment; it totally throws your opponent into retreat. It’s a strange quirk of human nature; even if someone’s dead set on rolling in guns blazing, it’s hard to unload on someone who professes comiseration and understanding. Even if I’m not able to give a person an easy answer, they usually leave the transaction feeling better for having talked to someone who tried to listen politely.

It’s basic customer service – something I spent much of my youth earning minimum wage figuring out. I haven’t quite lost the impulse. Problem is, it takes it out of you when you spend your whole day smiling and nodding while user after user vents their spleen in frustration over having to click a new button that’s shaped slightly differently than the old one; or (in a much more common case), fail at reading comprehension and get really worked up about something that doesn’t even apply.

Pleasantness as a survival tactic. It’s how we misanthropes struggle through life so we can reach our goal of being left alone.

Of course, all we want to do once we finally achieve solitude is fall asleep because the whole business of not being brutally honest to the ignorant masses is so mentally taxing, because sometimes, you really just want to smack someone upside the head with brutal honesty.

So, that’s been my week; my terribly exhausting week. I did find some solace in this piece from J.K.Appleseed in McSweeneys. Appleseed is a psuedonym for an anonymous employee of Apple retail, who uses the column to pull back the curtain on what life is like behind all that artistically conceived genius bar. In fact, it’s probably worth reading most of the entries in the series of Retai therapy: Inside the Apple Store. It’s enlightening, and maybe a little cathartic, at least in the sense that it makes me feel better that I don’t work for someone who’s weird corporate culture is so overtly enforced.