Augh!

She drove me nuts – plodding along, frowning, doing just one thing at a time, no hustle, generally all not-how-customer-service-is-done-y.

So I turned to my daughter Gracie and launched into a self-righteousness rant about the inadequate barista and how Starbucks should know better and customer service is everyone’s job, etc. etc. etc.

Gracie crinkled her eyebrows, watching the barista, as I went off on my tirade.

She then quietly turned to me, gazing into my soul with her bright too-old-for-a-5-year-old blue eyes and said:

“Mommy, maybe she’s in a bad mood because her daddy died yesterday.”

“Maybe she just needs a hug.”

Jesuschrist, kid.

Yes. Exactly.

Maybe.

So when I’m confronted with lameness, conflict, drama, angst, murkiness … I try to remember the wisdom from the child.

When two people I respect have a conflict about a controversial blog post. When a troll sends me an email accusing me of using my daughter’s brain tumor to make money. When someone sends an blast to their entire list alleging that I called someone out on their murky event just because I’m threatened and want to draw attention to myself. When the flight attendant forgets to ask me if I want anything to drink and just moves onto the next row and I’m dying of thirst.

When the crap goes down … I try to remember.

I try to remember that I don’t know the backstory.

I don’t know if his wife was just diagnosed with a terminal illness, if they just got escorted out of their foreclosed-upon home by the marshals, if today they had to dismiss their last employee because they couldn’t make payroll, if their kid just died from a long bout with leukemia, if their marriage has gone to complete crap and this was the morning they decided to separate … or even if she just had really bad gas all morning.

Everyone has shit going on.

And sometimes our shit gets the best of us.

I just hope.

Hope that when my shit gets the best of me, when I wrongly take out my overwhelm and stress all over the person behind the counter, when I overreact and push “submit” on the scathing blog post or comment, when I send an overly snarky email or tweet or go off in a voicemail … I hope that the undeserving person in receipt of my crap is understanding and knows that my behavior in my darkest times is not representative of who I really am.

I just hope that someone gives me the benefit of the doubt.

#thatisall

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.

Now this is different than someone who emails, comments on my blog, or posts on twitter/facebook who wants to engage in a real debate or who has genuine feedback. I’m all about that stuff! No, trolls do something different … it’s a personal attack.

As I explain in this video, I was *so upset* when I got his email & posts on my facebook wall. But instead of just sitting there upset, here’s what I did…

And check out the debate among how to handle trolls on my friend Scott Stratten’s blog today: Trolls, Meatheads and My Mom at Un-Marketing.com