Back when I had my restaurant, rush hours would get busy and hectic. Customers could see how we cooked stir-fry noodles through a glass. Most customers were nice and genuinely fascinated by the way their meals were being cooked.
There was this one lady who would always be condescending when placing the order. She would ask for extra portions of tofu or other ingredients, but she didn’t want to pay extra for them. We had to explain to her every time that extra portions cost extra money.
After she paid and once her order was in the stove, she would stare at you with a serious, unfriendly look, judging your every move. She would start pointing with her fingers through the glass and yelling instructions. And she would, again, try to get some extra ingredients for free by going back to the prep table and asking for them.
Oh, and she would do all this regardless of other customers behind her; she would just interrupt when they were ordering. She was one of those people.
She always complained about how long her order was taking, which never took more than 5 minutes. She would complain about not having enough tofu, about not being spicy enough, about everything.
She had a miserable attitude. Never smiling, always angry. But she would always come back. Once a week. And she behaved exactly the same way every time.
I would always be kind, no matter what. But as time went by and she kept coming back, I would get frustrated at her negative attitude, at her continuous attempts to get free food, and at her rudeness to interrupt other customers. As the restaurant owner, I tended to take the situation seriously.
Macario, my main cook at the time, would see me frustrated and he would start laughing. He would say, “Relax, man, just laugh at it. Don’t take it too seriously. Just let her be; she’ll be out in a few minutes. Smile and see the funny side of it. She is not having fun and we are.”
And after several times of him reminding me that, I would just smile every time she came back. And I glanced at him, “look who’s back,” I would say. We approached it with a sense of humor. We didn’t let her negativity get to us. Because as Yogi Ramacharaka pointed out:
“A sense of humor is one of the best gifts to mankind and prevents one from committing many insanities.”
Find the funny side of things, stay positive, be lighthearted, even when people are deliberately trying to make you mad. Don’t take life too seriously; laugh it off.
