This post was written by Stephanie Rubsam a Starbucks Partner and also a guest writer for Barista Life.  Belen got her degree in History and writes a personal advice piece on how to Just Let Go from the negative energy!

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Just Let Go.

Rude people are a fact of life. Some people just don’t know how to be nice. But does that mean that they should ruin your day? Absolutely not. While I’m not a perfect example of not letting rude customers get to me, I have found so much more happiness and peace in my job when I stopped caring about the rude people. One day I sat and thought about all the rude people that I knew, not just customers, and I realized that they are just really unhappy people. That is neither my fault, nor is it my responsibility to help them carry out their unhappiness. One of my supervisors gave me this bit of wisdom when I first started at my store: “Some people just need to feel powerful, and if the only place that they can feel powerful is at a Starbucks yelling at a barista, that’s their problem, not yours."

Imagine you just had a customer that was so rude to you that you almost cried. I know this has happened to me more times that I can count. I have cried at work on more than one occasion. One time a woman made me cry because we didn’t have sugar-free peppermint syrup in the summer, since it’s a winter seasonal syrup in my store. Another day we were so busy and people were so mean that I had a panic attack while taking drive thru orders. Granted these are worst case scenarios, I know for a fact that everyone working in the service industry has dozens of stories of rude customers. But what can you do, right? The customer is always right, right? Well, sometimes the customer is just a jerk. 

Working in the service industry is not an easy job. We’re underpaid, overworked, and don’t get much respect for all the work we do. It’s hard to stay positive. At the end of the day, however, how much does a random person yelling at you about a cup of coffee really affect your life? Besides, some of the best times I’ve had at work is reminiscing about horrible customers and laughing with my coworkers. Kill ‘em with kindness, brush it off, and you’ll come out on top every time.