Motivational Humorist Advice: Don’t Succumb to Stupid, Stupid Anger…

Have you ever taken delight in watching someone else get angry? So much so that when they screw themselves over you laugh and cheer? As a motivational humorist, I suppose I shouldn’t admit it, but for better or worse, I can say that I have…

A few years ago I was going out to brunch with a group of five friends. We walk into the restaurant which happened to be pretty crowded at the time. We are told that there is a bit of wait but we are in no rush so we say, “fine,” and hang out.

There is another group there, a family I believe, that has about the same number of people as us, and they were there before us. The patriarch of that group seems to be not nearly as ok as we are with the whole “we have to wait for a table” thing. If patience was a virtue, this guy was a clear sinner.

At some point a group of two people gets sat at a very large table. A table that clearly would have been big enough for this man’s family, but for some reason it was given to just two people. Evidently, this was too much for papa bird to take.

He starts mumbling and complaining to his wife, working himself up into a lather over the fact that in a crowded restaurant they wasted a large table on a small group. He eventually complains to the manager about this gross injustice (woe betide you if you get between this man and his Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity Breakfast Slam).

The manager tells the man, “I’m sorry sir, we just sit people on a first come, first served basis regardless of the table size.”

Now I complain about stupid policies a lot (like here, here, and here). In the grand scheme of things, this does not seem like the stupidest policy ever. It may not be the most efficient system in the world, but it doesn’t stick me as all that bad.

Apparently Mr. Impatient didn’t agree with that at all. He returns to his family and continues to complain about how stupid the manager was, how stupid the policy was, and how annoyed he was. He also dropped a few expletives in what most would consider a family restaurant.

Finally, he gets so worked up he says, “come on, let’s get out of here,” and marches the whole clan out the door.

If you are an astute observer of scripted comedies, you know what’s coming next…

Yup, about 2 minutes later the hostess calls out, “Fred, party of five.”

My group holds its collective breath…

“Fred, party of five.”

Oh, this is about to be sooooooo good…

“Fred party of five.”

Here it comes…

“Avish, party of five.”

Ta-Da!!

My friends and I all let out an audible cheer, and people looked at us like we were crazy.

Yes, it appears the angry man was named Fred and, if he had not gotten himself so worked up, he and his family would have been sat a scant two minutes after walking out. What made it all the much sweeter is that we were next in line and got Fred’s table.

We got to sit and enjoy a nice breakfast. Fred got all pissy and stressed, left the restaurant, and had to go spend time finding someplace else to eat (and, in the fantasy scenario that is my mind, had to again wait at that place).

This is why it is rarely worth it to get all worked up over stupid things: you end up making bad decisions that just end up making your life more difficult in the long run.

Sometimes it is worth walking out of a restaurant on principle. if you get bad or rude service, or if you honestly feel people are being sat ahead of you, or you just logically don’t want to wait. But to get worked up and angry over your impatience is just a sad way to go through life.

In a few isolated cases anger can be a useful thing. In most cases though it just gets in your way, especially when it’s misplaced or out of proportion. The next time you feel your anger rising, take a breath, calm down, and let it go. Life is too short to waste on stupid anger.

P.S. My favorite part of the story: When the hostess calls our table, we overhear a woman say, “I wonder what happened to Fred.” My friend, in true Pulp Fiction fashion, says, “Fred’s dead baby.” As we were walking to our table, basking in the joy of having benefited from the angry man’s bad decision, the same woman says, “I think those guys killed Fred!” No, no we did not. “‘Twas anger that killed the beast…”

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