Dear Nekoshema:

You wrote about your co worker: “I know the whole ‘hiding your pain behind a smile’ but he wasn’t like that, he really was a beautiful person.”- I am sure he was a beautiful person even if he did, at times, hid his pain behind a smile. It wouldn’t mean his smiles were fake, only that there was much pain underneath.

Regarding being fake vs being authentic: as your interactions with displeased customers, there may be ways for you to be friendly and authentic, not friendly or authentic. When a customer “calls you an idiot for making a cappuccino with foam..”, better not smile back, or extend friendly gestures to a customer who just mistreated you, that would be fake.

When you have a lunch break, seems to me, you should be away from customers so that you have your privacy. That is understandable to not want to be interrupted on your breaks.

You wrote: “I’m not friendly enough according to corporate which discourages me, especially when I would see him joking and laughing like the customer was an old friend and I just don’t know why I can’t be like that too”- be friendly in your own, authentic way, not the way someone else is friendly.

Avocados and Caviar

The feeling of nothingness
Deep – useless – bleak
Occasional twinge of melancholy
But always this suffocating doubt
Those distant days
Of avocados and caviar
Seem lost – locked away
Or captured – in a picture – beneath a bell jar
Do I love you?
Simple yearning for more?
Did I ever love you?
Rebel
Trapped in hell
Crushing intense pain
Let it die
Let the sea come in and take me
And let me die

–This is a beautiful poem. You wrote: “Simple yearning for more?”- I wonder if the more is in what is locked away in you (“Seem lost – locked away”)?

anita