A glimpse into a grumpy future

“They got new couches,” I thought to myself as I walked through the coffee shop to place my order. 

I felt a pang of nostalgia for the well-worn sofas I’d spent hours on. I also felt a sense of relief that my local caffeine hookup was doing well enough to upgrade. The pandemic hasn’t been good to small businesses. 

The barista cheerfully took my order as the man, whom I assume is the owner since he’s always there, scrolled through something business-looking on a tablet. Rather than tell him I thought the new couches looked nice and out myself as a regular, I stood off to the side and tried to blend into the wallpaper until my latte was ready.

This place is my escape from home. As a fully remote employee for over two years, I’ve come to realize just how small you can make your world without really trying. 

I still shower and put on “real” clothes—assuming the joggers I’ve never once run in count as non-PJs—to stave off cabin fever and all the other mental illnesses. But the coffee shop is a necessity when I start to feel like I’m under self-inflicted house arrest.

I like to listen to the murmur of people’s conversations, the various espresso noises, and the energetic Latin music. It feels like participating in the scene without actually talking to anyone.

An older couple joined a woman sitting at a table alone, and my formerly silent neighbor blossomed into talkativeness. Apparently, the Thanksgiving holiday brought a lot of family drama, and though she claimed she “wouldn’t even know where to start,” I suspected she’d already run through the saga at least once before with someone else.

The husband left the two ladies to put in a coffee order, and I tried to tune the women out because we’re told eavesdropping is rude. Plus, I had work assignments to focus on.

I was moderately successful until the husband—let’s call him Bob—returned with coffee and a surprise for each of the ladies. The shop sells local artists’ work, and he’d picked out a vase and wooden box as presents. 

Bob’s friend—let’s call her Carol—thanked him graciously and remarked how thoughtful he was for the unexpected gift. Bob’s wife—I’m gonna go with Betty—looked confused and complained, “I guess that’s another thing I’m gonna have to ship home.” They’d flown into town.

I felt a little bad for Bob but figured he must be used to it. He and Betty seemed to have been married for a long time.

As Betty and Carol one-upped each other on whose holiday was worse, I decided to pop in my noise-canceling headphones and try again to mind my own business.

I’ve been trying this new thing where I don’t dwell in negativity. I love a good vent session as much as the next person, but often I find that once I get riled up about something—whether it’s my own frustration or empathizing with someone else—it’s hard for me to wind back down. Better to not go there at all.

But it’s hard. I’m very skilled at finding frustration. Or maybe frustration finds me. Either way, we collide at least once a day, more if I’m in a particularly spicy mood. And often, I just don’t know what to do with that explosion of negative energy.

I’ve tried walking. I’ve tried breathing. I’ve tried meditating. I’ve tried exercising. Those things give the angry shockwave time to dissipate rather than intensify. But they don’t solve the problem that I collided with in the first place.

As these women dug deep into their frustrations and resurfaced days-old annoyances, I could relate to their temptation to gossip and scratch the itch of unaddressed irritations. Bonding over grievances can be powerful.

Still, their negativity was rubbing off on me. I resented that energy in my usually cozy atmosphere.

At some point, Carol seemed to have taken the lead in the race to claim the title of most aggrieved. To cement her victory, she pulled out a piece of paper with several paragraphs of printed text. She handed it to Bob, who’d spent most of the conversation as a passive listener.

Happy to be included, he began reading in earnest as Carol explained that she’d recently “lost two friends,” before clarifying that they were still alive but no longer in touch. One of these friends had sent Carol a very long email full of self-pity. This email, now being passed around in print, was evidently so egregious that Carol replied with a short, polite paragraph (conveniently not included in the printout), more or less ending their friendship.

Bob seemed truly disappointed by the email content. Betty was dutifully outraged that this other person would have written such a thing. Carol seemed validated by her tablemates’ responses. But as a polite person must, she offered weak defenses on her ex-friend’s behalf—a delayed display of graciousness after printing out and spreading around the offending email.

“Wooowwww,” I thought, in the judgy tone I usually reserve for self-admonishment. Having not read the email, I wondered if maybe some of the criticisms of Carol were pretty spot-on.

But before any self-satisfaction could take hold, shame snuck up and took its place. Not for eavesdropping. Sure, we’re told that’s impolite, but this is a public space after all, and my neighbors were not particularly quiet.

My mind flashed back to a recent collision with frustration. A good-natured colleague had assigned me a task at work but left out some information I needed to complete it. In my nicest Slack speak, I sent him a message to get clarification. We spent 30 minutes volleying responses back and forth but making little progress. Rather than jump on a call to save us both time, I screenshotted his lackluster responses and Slack’d them to a friend on the project. I was hoping my friend would be able to answer my questions, but I also wanted validation for the last half hour I’d wasted.

It seemed so minor. The message I screenshotted wasn’t inflammatory. It wasn’t sent to me in confidence. My backchanneling did validate my frustration. And it did get me the information I needed. 

But it wasn’t the right way to go about it. And I probably spent another 30 minutes getting all whipped up about my grievances rather than letting the annoyance fade out, so I could get back to work. I may as well have printed it out and passed it around a table.

Carol and Betty had a shitty holiday. Each of their gripes was likely the accumulation of many frustrations that were never addressed. They’re probably justified and deserve their vent session, even if it doesn’t resolve anything.

And I’m likely to find myself in their shoes if I keep backchanneling my frustrations instead of facing them. If I keep avoiding positive connections (“hey, the new couches look good!”) and seeking out negative alliances (“ugh… this again…”). If I keep pretending that who I am tomorrow will somehow be different from who I am today.

But if this glimpse into a grumpy future taught me anything, it’s this: I should keep trying to not dwell in negativity and address frustrations head-on. 

Oh, and it also taught me that screenshotting Slack messages is a slippery slope to printing out emails. So let’s not be that gal.