Uncategorized, work

Having a Tantrum

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Well,  yesterday I had a tantrum. My agency is on provisional licensure status due to deficiencies that have already been corrected,  and now it only remains for us all to do some really annoying online  training to get the licensure people to go away.

Our regional  director sent out email  instructions for how we were to access the training, but I couldn’t access it, and it was nowhere to be found in my inbox until a very patient and helpful coworker helped me retrieve it from my spam folder. I cussed and yelled and fussed, and she just laughed at me and  patiently walked me through the process for accessing the training.  I don’t often get angry, since I tend to joke it off.  Most people are intimidated by my anger, which surprises me, since I  feel  I am rather harmless, even when I am angry.

How do people know when you are angry?  When was the last time you had a tantrum?

57 thoughts on “Having a Tantrum”

  1. It’s been a while since I had a full blown tantrum. I can’t even recall the last one.
    I get annoyed often, and if it’s real bad I may stew on it a while… it’s like a slow boil. Eventually I’ll get over it.
    It’s better if I can just get mad and get over it.
    Depends how the rest of the day is going, you know? If my tolerance is already low I’m more apt to get mad quicker.

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Sorry I missed it—that makes a case for signing on earlier. Irritable is not unusual for me, and Lou will confirm that. But tantrum angry is unusual. To really melt down I have to be very short on sleep or have a very painful migraine. Then I say or do things that are, well, unadvisable. And I like the F-bomb. The last one I remember was 3 years ago when I had a migraine as we left Fountain Hills. The headache got worse as we drove up the Superstition Mountains to a higher elevation, which changed the barometric pressure. I said stuff. Then I feel so remorseful later.

    Renee, there is nothing like bureaucratic nonsense to prompt a tantrum.

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    1. Given all the changes, new requirements, upheavals, staff resignations and administrators who were bullying people before they themselves were fired, I am surprised I haven’t thrown things at people.

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  6. ari is 2 1/2 now

    when i yell at him and tell him to be nice to the dogs or the cats or the fish or tell him not to color on the walls or the couch he looks at me and says “papa has an angry face” it always cracks me up the he watches until he says “now papa has a happy face”

    my last tantrum was last night

    i go to the family room to hang out with debbis and watch tv. wheel of fortune then a movie or some netflix thing

    she has a thing about wanting to have the tv on the lowest possible volume at which point i can’t hear it so i ask her to turn it up and she begrudgingly turns it up one cluck to where it’s more but i still have to strain to hear it. then the music before a commercial come on and all music is cranked up by the networks 5 notches higher than the show at which point she turns it way down then the show starts up again and i can’t hear the show again. it is particularly an issue on netflix or amazon, if 25 is loud enough on cbs on netflix it could be 40 is needed
    debbie thinks 25 should be ok because that’s where she likes it but on netflix even she can’t hear it but she doesn’t get it and it drives me nuts so i stormed upstairs and watched tv by myself and shut the door
    i hate arguing about the same stuff over and over.
    not looking forward to closing the warehouse in that regard.

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  7. Among my friends and family I’m famous for how rarely I get angry. I almost never do. My default setting, when something goes wrong, is to blame myself. As just one example, a trivial one in some ways, I get along well with my former wife’s boyfriend. She has good taste in men.

    Another reason I have a long, slow fuse is that I remember times when I blew up and later regretted it.

    One afternoon my teenaged daughter came home from school sobbing. Two things had hurt her. First, a black kid in her gym class repeatedly mocked her as a “fat, white cow.” Worse, her favorite teacher, a social studies guy, had given her a D for a project in which Molly had to collaborate with other kids on a joint report. The other kids sandbagged her, doing no work, and the teacher was critical of the end product.

    Having my daughter abused brought out the mama bear in me. I got on the phone in full attack mode. The gym teacher was appalled, although he said this was normal behavior for that particular student. The social science teacher got the full benefit of my wrath. I was highly critical of his methodology. I was articulate and focused, and this poor guy didn’t even try to defend himself.

    About four weeks later my daughter reported that the social science teacher had suffered a “nervous breakdown” and was convalescing in a hospital. I’m sure he had problems before I made him a target for my fury, but you can imagine how I felt about my tantrum. I ended up calling him at the hospital to apologize and talk about fly fishing. Remembering that afternoon makes it even harder for me to now blow off steam when life takes a turn I hate. And, anyway, it’s usually my fault to begin with.

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  8. When I get angry I get quiet . . if I’m around anyone else. By myself, where I can let the expletives fly with no repercussions, I vent all the accumulated public anger from the past week or two. I LOVE getting angry at my computer for some reason. Therapeutic, even though repeatedly slapping the tower to stifle the persistent buzz of the fan vibrating the flimsy plastic housing never works for more than a few minutes.

    And don’t get me started about getting angry on the golf course when I’m doing a solo round and no one is within 500 yards of me. (yes, that happens often at our little club here. On marginal playing days or off-peak times, I’ve been either the only person on the course or one of a few who are spread far and wide.) Now THAT’S what I call therapeutic!

    And stupid too because no one can ever hit every golf shot perfectly, which is what I get angry about. I hit one bad shot out of ten and I go ballistic for some silly reason.

    But I’ve never been even been in a physical fight of any sort, and I would never lay a hand on my wife in anger. Although she doth vex me so at certain times.

    Chris in O-town

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        1. i say it’s redundant
          if she is at the beginning of the sentence
          doth vex me is appropriate in almost all remaining sentences as far as i’m concerned

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    2. The last time I went to a golf driving range I got mad. And regretted it later. I began losing my good nature as my drives sputtered or went awry, spraying far from where I aimed. Anger made me try harder, culminating in a mighty stroke that caused my driver to leave my hands and go spinning far, far out on the course. I had no other way of retrieving it than going out on foot, waving my arms like a fool and ducking as balls sailed by. That was the moment I became an ex-golfer!

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      1. I don’t think there’s another sport that brings out the anger and frustration in people nearly as much as golf. My theory is that it looks so easy on the surface, but is so damn hard in reality.

        Chris

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    3. tim said: “i say it’s redundant
      if she is at the beginning of the sentence
      doth vex me is appropriate in almost all remaining sentences as far as i’m concerned.”

      My laugh of the day. Thanks, time. 🙂

      Chris
      (don’t tell my wife I laughed so hard)

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  9. One of our grad school friends was concerned about us having knife blocks on our kitchen counters for fear that we might get angry while cooking and stab each other. I have idea why he worried about that, since we rarely if ever argue. Our friend grew up in France, so maybe that had something to do with it.

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  10. I am a leave and slam the door person, which is unfortunate here because there are a lot of doorways with no doors, and hardly any place to go in the winter. I do find that a good walk is sometimes necessary, by myself.

    I did a rant (this would be yelling) at Husband a week or so ago about something… interesting that I can’t remember what now. It does seem that there are more rants the longer I’m cooped up.

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  11. Daughter will get mad and she’s really in Teenager mode; first it’s the gasping and “WHAT? WHY!?” Then jumps up, growls, stomps up off the hallway, and slams the door. We’re OK with that; it’s a good safe way to express your self and Kelly and I both did that too. So I can relate. But then a couple minutes later she’s back apologizing for slamming the door and we can talk things out. She blows and then it’s over.
    If she’s really mad, sometimes she’ll go back there and cry: great, huge, racking, sobbing cries, and then run back out and go out the front door. That’s rare. And she doesn’t go far, just outside and sits down. That’s a little more scary. She’s only done it once this fall as the weather was colder and I was able to get her to come inside and talk about it.
    She’s never been much of a runner. A few times in school, and just a few times here at home. Usually just to get away from whatever situation it was, so never far, but boy, that is scary when she does that.

    If I get mad, depending where I am or, like Chris said, who’s around. I think the neighbors a mile away would hear me yelling down in the barn some days… depended which way the wind was blowing. I can hear them sometimes, that’s why I think they could hear me.
    These days I get brusque first. I may not yell, but the pitch of my voice changes. I warn the students here (when we’re doing plays) I won’t yell at them, but I do talk loud and sometimes I yell to be heard over whatever else is going on. But it’s not personal; I won’t yell AT them.
    I remember once, someone told me that a new person asked them who I was and why I was so grumpy. They told the newbie, “Oh he’s not mad; that’s just Ben and he’s very nice.”
    That also sort of gave me pause; maybe I need to work on that.
    But that was a long time ago; I hope I’m better now.

    Home alone, yelling and swearing helps.

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  12. The couple living to the north of our second home in Ames would fight three or four times a year. They might have had fights we didn’t know about, but the usual venue seemed to be the kitchen, which was on a wall facing our place. The fights were epic, involving throwing cooking items at each other. That was well before light Teflon cookware appeared, so this couple fired cast iron skillets and Dutch ovens at each other. The noise was spectacular. We didn’t especially worry that the husband was abusing his wife. She had about thirty pounds on him, and from what we heard she gave as good as she got.

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    1. Last summer Kelly and I stopped at a Chinese restaurant. It was mid afternoon so it was pretty quiet in there. A couple kids behind the counter, maybe 10 or 12 took our order, then went out back somewhere to get mom and dad. Mom and Dad were having quite a discussion. Of course we couldn’t understand the words, but you didn’t need to to know it was a very heated discussion. At least it didn’t sound like any kitchenware or knives thrown.

      Speaking of knives, anyone see the movie ‘Knives out’? We liked it.

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  13. Fierce temper as a child, which has gradually faded. Now I shrug off almost everything, except frustrations about dealing with same issues over and over. Got angry last week. But it upsets her so I have stay in control

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  17. When I was a kid I was like BiR, leave the room slam the door. But as an adult I have morphed into a walk it off kind of person.

    On Sunday as I was rolling out sugar cookie dough, I texted both of my sisters and my mom To say I was thinking of them. They normally have a sugar cookie day about this time every December. They all live within a half an hour of each other. My mom and my baby sister texted back thinking of you, too miss you. My tone deaf middle sister felt the need to text back “too bad about cookies but I really miss our family day.” Now you need to know that it does not bother me at all that my sisters and my mom have done this cookie day for years and years. And I suppose if I had known before that my middle sister refers to it as a family day it might’ve bothered me a bit but the fact that she texted it to me like that bothered me A LOT . I left the house in a storm but since I had forgotten to put on any shoes before storming out, I only went a block before I had to come home.

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  18. Most of the time I’m able to manage my anger so that it doesn’t come out in destructive ways. I never throw stuff, just not in my repertoire of how to channel my anger. I probably slam a door once every other year or so, and when I do, you had better know that I’m thoroughly pissed off and get the hell out of my way. If I’m angry enough to speak loudly or SHOUT, it’s probably also a good idea to make yourself scarce. I don’t get there often, but when I do, you have pushed me beyond what I’ll tolerate.

    I can’t recall the last time I was angry enough to SHOUT or slam a door, but I’m sure it was sometime during this pandemic. What’s more, I can’t recall what caused it. Chances are it was just some thoughtless or inconsiderate action that offended me at a particularly vulnerable or sensitive moment.

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