Sarah Nyhan

Once when I was a taxi driver, I had a customer that was completely out of line. However, she was paralyzed and in a wheelchair. She was taking her frustrations with her situation out on me everyone and anyone around her. She was being incredibly disrespectful, demanding, and unreasonable. I maintained my cool and didn’t take the bait. I didn’t take her behavior personal. I let her blow off her steam but maintained my boundaries and did not add energy to or enable her bad behavior. By the end of the very long trip, she turned to me and said, “You have the patience of Job.”

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My last position was a bit of a challenge because I was only trained for about two days before I was off on my own. Literally. Working from home. After about a week or two, I realized I needed further direction because my stats were not on par with the rest of my team. The managers offered to send a high-performing worker down to train with me on the job. Within half a day, the other employee was able to streamline my process and I was doing great on my own within a week or two. All to say, in the future, instead of spending too much time trying to reinvent the wheel, I have learned to survey others and figure out if they have already identified solutions to the problems I am encountering.