If your job gets up your nose, picket!
Actually, my job is comparatively enjoyable. I make sure to brown bag a sandwich for dinner (mostly 2nd shift work), bring a couple bottles of carbonated water (for any work-related/stomach issues), and work mostly separately unless coworkers are needed to fill in when workload increases.
My job is mostly sales and cash-handling, as well as fronting product and keeping the store clean for the morning shift. The routine is basically the same each day, except the names and faces of the patrons are hardly ever the same. There are loyal patrons who frequent our store we've enjoyed a rapport with over the years.
And occasionally, there's the person who's had a bad day comes in and makes it difficult for us. Thankfully, we're trained to handle most issues instead of being cold-hearted, and it speaks well of us when we can turn a frown around into an appreciative patron.
Many times, it's when folks have not yet enjoyed a decent meal from the time they finish work, through rush hour traffic, until they make it home safely that folks are most focused on getting in and out and not wishing to make small talk. They can be abrupt. They don't like waiting in line for too long. Tempers are often shortest at these times.
Truthfully, if it weren't for the fact that most adults are pretty good at demonstrating a healthy amount of self-control and self-restraint, and because it is possible to rise to the occasion and go the extra mile for people, I'd still not enjoy my job as much as currently.
I'm not highly paid, but make enough to make ends meet. My job requires me to stand for several hours until a 15 minute dinner break (a sandwich and beverage is enough to be sustaining), then several more hours of working the sales floor until store close.
We have a comparatively diverse variety of people who visit our store, and sometimes, in all honesty, there are times I might not feel especially comfortable serving them. Not many folks, just the ones who are twice my size and have biceps the size of my car's front fender. These are the folks I don't know enough about to feel confident with. Perhaps you have your own stories of how you cope with times you've felt uncomfortable.
Anyway, if my job gets up in my grill, my usual reply is, "How would you like your receipt?" Only once did someone catch me off-guard by saying, "Medium-rare, hold the onions, thanks." We both laughed and I said, "So that's why the shoe laces, then..."
