Lamb vs. Snake

What would you rather be, A lamb or a snake? My first instinct is to be a lamb and it really showed today at work. I walked in this morning thinking everything was fine. There was tons of work to do and we were coming up on a holiday weekend. Assuming my day was about to fly by, I opened my email to HORROR.

Let me try to explain...I work for local government and when angry people are involved it's not always pretty. I've always thought myself a nice, hard working person who could charm any angry constituent with kindness and patience. WRONG. A woman was very upset that in one of my "kind and patient" emails, I mentioned that unfortunately the process takes some time (meaning government is VERY slow and please don't call me tomorrow wondering why so and so isn't done yet!).

This one little phrase "the process takes some time" turned into a whole diatribe from this woman to my boss about how his staff member was very condescending and how dare I tell her it would take some time. Forget all the good things I said about taking the issue very seriously and working on it right away, calling in the big cheeses, blah, blah, blah.

As I read on, I was mortified. My little lamb self came out and I began sobbing in my cubicle. How could someone attack me when I was actually working hard to resolve their problem?

After crying a little more and collecting myself, I came to the conclusion that if I am to survive this political world I exist in from 8am-5pm each day, I must shed my wool and become a snake. Not a rattle snake or anything. How about a garden snake? I need the rough exterior with the soft insides. A thicker skin with a sensitive heart. Not sure yet how to strike that balance but however it comes about, it will be new for me. I will be thinking about that tonight over a pint of beer. How better else to kiss off a bad day and start anew???