Stuttering, that involuntary repetition of sounds coming from your mouth, that seems to be the most frustrating thing that could happen to anyone who wants to make a good first impression or you want to tell something important. Of course, it isn't like the first time it has happened to me but exactly how do you deal with yourself in that state.
Guns & Roses were about to have their concert here in Singapore for the first and probably the last time. And people who were driving to the venue had to purchase a special carpark label to get into its nearby carpark. In order to do that, they had to exchange the ticket voucher for the carpark label. And the only place they could do that was at the main office all the way at Paya Lebar. So imagine facing over 50 angry customers a day complaining about how much of a hassle they have to go through to get to the place for the carpark label. So one day, this customer asked for my name when she was rejected a carpark label just because she forgot to bring the voucher for the exchange which was crucial in the exchange mainly for the show's back end purposes. And guess what her argument was, "Who is the customer? I'm the cutomer right?" She went to customer service and she demanded to be given the carpark label saying that she would send the picture of the voucher ripped when she reaches home. And that's just trying to screw the system's protocol based on some "trust on humanity" she expects us to have. It had to go through permission from higher authorities to get that for her. And when she looked so happy after she got what she wanted, I couldnt feel happy for her. Because there were dozens more who couldn't get it without exchanging the physical ticket and yet she got it with that annoying bratty little attitude of hers that I just can't stand. Why exactly did she deserve that chance, why? Come on guys.
And this is what I gathered from the experience. Or at least the recount of thoughts and emotions running through my head and system. It's like when you have drafts of messages inside your head that are ready to be delivered to the audience but suddenly, parts of your tongue starts becoming paralysed. At that exact moment the spotlight moment gets ruined by that infamous stuttering. So while you're sitting down there, still determined to handle the situation at its best, saving both sides' asses, the surge of doubt kicks in. Then at this rate, you're down to perhaps 50% determination left in your system. That's when you start saying the wrong things. This usually leads to another issue or just an unresolved conflict. That was what happened to me when she walked straight to the customer service line.
I am not going to lie, those type of experiences tend to bring my self-esteem down to its lowest point sometimes. Other times, I usually get over it pretty quickly. That's when I realised that I was back again at square one in this area of expertise. I started to feel useless again and irrelevant. That Im all good for nothing.
Right after work, the depressive emotions came creeping back into my little black heart making me recall all of my other social interactions. How I always have problems with my friends or how Im unable to help someone or how nobody trusts me or basically how irrelevant I am. It took me a very long to separate out all these similar instances. Because deep deep down inside my head was left with some 1% or so, amount of logic that was able to bring my state of mind back to the route to sanity. And that logic was- Although these experiences were similar, they were not all the same. I had to cut myself a little bit of slack to actually be able to differentiate these things. And it worked sufficiently, but this episode is probably going to happen again in the future, I just know it. So that's why the battle never ends. And we become warriors against these inner demons. Perhaps we can't lose them but we can definitely rise above. But right now, kinda just wanna disappear.
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