Give Tantrums Back to Toddlers

My mother tells me I threw my first temper tantrum when I was three.  It was bed time, and I wanted to stay up.  She said “No,” and I peacefully started towards the stairs.  Suddenly, she says, I stopped.  My face lit up, my eyes got real wide as the wheels churned inside my head, and then I threw myself to ground and did my best imitation of what she assumes I’d seen earlier that day in the grocery store.  She got up, said, “If you’re going to act that way, I’m leaving,” and hurried outside before she burst out laughing.

I believe we need to stop rewarding people who throw temper tantrums, whatever their age.  No longer relegated to the realm of toddlers, I see temper tantrums being used as a tool of manipulation on a regular basis.  Because the people throwing these fits get their way, they continue to act in childish and unseemly manners.  My mother taught me to never reward a temper tantrum, and that’s a lesson I believe needs to be applied more broadly in the world.

I recently had an altercation in a parking lot.  I accidentally took a woman’s parking spot.  I pulled into the restaurant’s lot as a car was pulling out of a space near the front.  This particular lot is cramped and I thought the woman was waiting to leave, so I moved quickly to get out of her way.  As I pulled in, she laid on her horn.  As I got out of the car, she screamed and berated me.  As I walked away, she called me foul names.  I only spoke one sentence to her, “Had you been a little more polite, I’d have given you the space.”

And I would have.  She claimed to have a little girl in the car, and the night was cold.  I made a mistake and I was willing to fix it.  I’d like to think I’m an understanding person and can admit when I’m wrong.  But her behavior, especially in front of a child, was not something I felt should be rewarded.  I didn’t expect her to be friendly, but just a modicum of human decency would have gotten her that space.

More than just the parking lot incident, where road rage might have been a factor, temper tantrums are becoming an everyday occurrence.  I work in retail, and, unfortunately, the customer is always right.  We have policies in place to stop fraud, protect our customers and ourselves, and keep the store profitable and our employees working.

However, people are figuring out that if they yell, scream and threaten loud enough, they can get whatever they want.  The offenses that are worthy of outright rage seem to be wide ranging.  I’ve been screamed at and berated because a woman’s adult son figured out a week after the return date that his mp3 player didn’t have enough space on it.  My wife has faced down seething rage from a customer who was asked to show a receipt for a big-ticket, high-theft item.  One customer ordered my manager to give him a hundred dollars off a TV because he wasn’t happy with the quality of a less expensive TV.

All of these people were appeased and apologized to.  Every one of them got their way.  We were told to “make the customer happy.”  However, when another problem comes up, I have no doubt that these customers will resort to screaming and yelling immediately, rather than trying to be civil about it.

I see these temper tantrums as a symptom of a larger problem, one that’s going to be a bigger threat the longer it persists.  People today have become very insular.  They don’t tend to recognize anyone but themselves.  “Me first” has morphed into “me first, second and third.”  They think everyone is out to get them, no one has honest intentions, every little slight is a personal attack.  A majority of the problems in our society stem from increasingly self-centered motivations and an increasingly disconnected populace.  We don’t recognize other people any longer.

 

I believe we need to stop and take a good, long, hard look at ourselves.  I believe we need to examine the root causes of this disconnection, and discover what can be done to reverse the trend, because more than just a parking space or a free upgrade is at stake.  I believe we need to reconnect with our neighbors, reconnect with our community, reconnect with our world.  If we do that, maybe temper tantrums will belong solely to the toddlers again.