So much time and men­tal energy is spent on bat­tles that are not worth engag­ing in. Cer­tainly, some per­son­al­i­ties are more prone to friv­o­lous ver­bal karate than oth­ers.  Think back and count the min­utes and hours you have spent in debate, ver­bal duel and reproach of top­ics that a minute, hour, week, or year later did not mat­ter. How much time have you lost?

Some­one called me today to ask how to do it. How to move on, not take it per­son­ally, make wiser deci­sions about engage­ment in con­flict, how to avoid it, how to choose which bat­tles are worth it. I don’t think she expected what I told her.

Tran­si­tion­ing back to the U.S. after 11 years of work in Mex­ico and Spain I took an entry level cus­tomer ser­vice rep posi­tion at the 15th largest on shore call cen­ter with full con­fi­dence I wouldn’t be in the seat for long. They wouldn’t hire any­one in a man­age­ment role that didn’t have call cen­ter expe­ri­ence.  The fact that a com­pany of that size and impor­tance didn’t have an onboard­ing or new man­ager train­ing pro­gram is fod­der for another post in the future — promise.

After hav­ing man­aged a vaca­tion club (OK sure, it’s really time­share) sales room of 50 sales peo­ple and closers on the  Mayan Riv­iera and a mega buku bucks bud­get, I was tak­ing cus­tomer ser­vice calls about $4.00  prod­ucts for the world’s largest food man­u­fac­turer teth­ered to my cubi­cle by the umbil­i­cal cord of a head­set. I spoke with peo­ple who pur­chased frozen entrees and claimed chicken uteruses in their food, not enough peas, mis­lead­ing pho­tos on the pack­ag­ing and every for­eign object imag­in­able and unimag­in­able on their fork or in their mouth.

To say that it was not the job for me at that point in my career would be an under­state­ment. But I made the choice to get my foot in the door. I was keenly aware of what I was doing, it was a strat­egy.  The place was only 5 min­utes from my house! I gave myself 6 months to learn every­thing I pos­si­bly could about the biz and move up or out. It worked out exactly that way I intended and in 8 years I climbed up the rungs of the lad­der 4 times. But that’s not really the point of the story.

What IS the point?

Learn­ing the busi­ness was fun and chal­leng­ing. I went way above and beyond prod­uct infor­ma­tion and pro­ce­dures. I was inter­ested in growth, remem­ber? Yet the major­ity of stint in the seat was tak­ing those calls and after a very short time they started to get on my nerves. Tons of nice peo­ple called too but soon I was answer­ing calls in my dreams and on remote con­trol dur­ing the day. I quickly had had enough of that front line stuff…

One day I took my doo­dling to new heights while on the job. I cut black con­struc­tion paper into small tomb­stone shapes and stacked them like a memo pad next to my PC. While lis­ten­ing to nasty, stu­pid, enti­tled, A-driver types I would grab a col­or­ful gel pen and write the caller’s ini­tials and an equally col­or­ful epitaph.

“Loser logic got him nowhere”

“She proved that the cus­tomer is not always right”

“He accom­plished his goal to irri­tate others”

“Inca­pable of a real life“

“She made chicken uteruses in food desirable”

“He financed col­lege with free coupons“

A lit­tle addi­tional glit­ter pen action and each offender of com­mon sense was quickly and firmly tacked to my cubie wall grave­yard. And then I was done with them. I put them out of my mis­ery to their final rest­ing place. It was cathar­tic and I could move on with a smile on my lips for the next mys­tery caller.

I shared other inno­v­a­tive meth­ods of mov­ing on too like reward from the voices in my head. This tech­nique works awe­somely. The voices ask me ques­tions like,

“Do you really need to argue about this or would you rather a latte?”

“Is this rela­tion­ship worth the effort or would your time be bet­ter spent check­ing Facebook?”

“Will this be impor­tant tomorrow?”

If the bat­tle is that impor­tant to engage me it is revealed by being more impor­tant than hav­ing a latte and check­ing my friends sta­tus updates. That’s rarely the case.

What tech­niques do you use to deal with unwanted sit­u­a­tions, make wiser deci­sions about engage­ment in con­flict, or choose your bat­tles care­fully, or do you just dive in with eyes wide open?

P.S. Those lit­tle voodoo dolls work too