TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: How's it going?
THERAPIST: All right.
CLIENT: It's been a really hard week for me. Yesterday I...
THERAPIST: I'm sorry to hear that.
CLIENT: Yeah. Yesterday I attempted to quit my job, but I was talked out of it. So...
THERAPIST: Oh, wow.
CLIENT: I had a customer that was so frustrating in that they were not... they wanted me to teach them something but would not let me speak. Kept cutting me off, they kept telling me I was wrong. Halfway through this I was like, I am guiding you through this. But I... [then I learned my lesson] (ph) by the time I said, can you please wait for a second, somebody will be with you in a few minutes, and just immediately walked up to a manager. I said, I need to give my two weeks'. And I was doing fine (ph) with it, which is good.
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: Yeah. [0:00:55] It's just one of those things where I just felt that... I mean, I can... at that moment I just felt really frustrated and very unable to cope with things. And I am hoping that it won't be like that any longer. But I have been just in general... I mean, for a while there it was the little things that had been just driving me crazy in public sort of... kind of been sort of spilling over into, I guess now, my workplace, because I'm just... I didn't yell at anybody or anything. I just really, really needed to get away.
THERAPIST: Yeah. Wow.
CLIENT: I mean, it... what do you do when you're put in an impossible situation where you don't even get a chance to say what you're going to do before they tell you how wrong you are, but yet that you're supposed to be there for them? [0:01:55] You know what I mean? It's just... it's an impossible situation. (Pause) And I had just viewed another customer treating another person I work with very poorly, like, maybe an hour or two before that. [They were being insulting] (ph), they called her a nitwit to her face.
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: So... and just other... just stuff like that. And it's just like, it's... the ante in terms of what people... the way people are treating people in the store just keeps coming up and up and up and just... I don't know what to do. So... (Pause)
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: We were...
THERAPIST: Yeah, because you've worked with a lot of people at this point.
CLIENT: Yeah, nine years' worth of people.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And... [0:02:56]
THERAPIST: And I've never heard you say that you were ready to quit.
CLIENT: I had thought briefly, well, it would be great to quit...
THERAPIST: Uh-huh.
CLIENT: But not like, as in, like... in the middle of a session leaving the person alone. Apparently he was a little bit better when someone came and worked with him, possibly because he realized, when I walked away in the middle of it and it took about 20 minutes for them to find somebody else to work with him...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: He sort of semi-apologized. He was back in today, too, not with me.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But I'm not sure if he was back in to be abusive to somebody else...
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: But he sort of made the rounds at different Microsoft... he's been at many Microsoft stores. And I'm starting to think maybe he...
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: He wears out his welcome. At least, that's what one of the managers suspected...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Because you could see from the listings the different places he'd been to. So... but between that and just a lot of... I mean, I'm not ready to quit, per se. I'm just... that, and we have a bunch of other things that are going on at work. [0:03:56] Just little things are just really stressful and overwhelming. So... (Pause) I don't really know why. It's not a big deal to me in that my hours are being cut back, per se, but it does affect me indirectly. There's some sort of problem with payroll in terms of not having... I don't know the exact information of it. But a couple of times they've said things like, oh, there isn't enough payroll for this or that. And that is... we haven't had that kind of comment made since... this one guy working for Microsoft retail that he was fired from the jobs. But we don't have anybody else that's doing that. And I don't know what's going on, so... plus they're rearranging a lot of the way we do things that is going to piss off the customers and piss off the... like, where things are located and stuff like that and kind of I think make some of the service industry... I don't think it would bother me, per se, but the repair people will be very upset about it. [0:05:02]
THERAPIST: Uh-huh.
CLIENT: So that'll be exciting to see. But... so it's indirectly going to be very stressful. Things are not affecting me as much?
THERAPIST: Right, but they're affecting a bunch of people that you work with...
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: So (inaudible at 0:5:24) overall morale, it would affect you. I mean, as you say, indirectly.
CLIENT: Yeah. Last time we were making jokes about going through our couches to see if we had enough change for payroll, that kind of stuff. Yeah. But...
THERAPIST: That's terrible, too, because I believe I recall hearing that overall Microsoft's doing pretty well.
CLIENT: Yeah. I don't know if it's just they didn't give us additional hours for tax free or what. [0:05:56] I don't know what this is going on. This only just started a little bit ago, the amount that they gave... the number of overall payroll hours we spread across the entire thing wasn't changed because of that. Well, I don't know what's going on. And to be honest I really don't need to know the immediate... as long as it doesn't go on too much longer, I don't really want (ph) to know.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: But one of my coworkers who used to be alternately very bitchy with me and then okay for a while has started up on her crap again, things like, no matter what... what was it? Something like, no matter what person B says, I don't dislike you. That kind of crap.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Yeah. Or, may I borrow your computer for a moment? No. No reason, just no. And very satisfied, like a, no, kind of thing. Yeah. That kind of stuff. And I don't know. It just... we'll see what happens. [0:06:57] I just hate when things get political like that, because it's just... I do like my job, but it sucks all the happiness out of it.
THERAPIST: Uh-huh.
CLIENT: And I don't know if this is just like an every August thing in Providence or what, that this happens. I don't know. But that seems to be kind of what's going on with that. I'm just in general just exhausted, sort of running very low energy. (Pause) Yeah, that kind of stuff. The one good thing sort of-and hopefully we'll find out more about this-is that one of Mike's advisors sent out a couple of things about different...
(Phone sound) [0:07:59]
CLIENT: This has been going off for a while. I'm going to check to make sure everything's okay.
THERAPIST: Yeah. (Pause)
CLIENT: Okay.
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:08:10)
CLIENT: Yeah, everything's fine. Just apparently we're making... we're doing this by bullets, every thought to a different text message, so... same person.
THERAPIST: Oh.
CLIENT: But yeah, his advisor sent a thing about a postdoc opening in... at a school called OVO. I don't know if you know much about that. That's sort of like the Harvard of Italy.
THERAPIST: Oh.
CLIENT: And they're looking for a postdoc up there...
THERAPIST: Oh, wow.
CLIENT: Although he already did one postdoc. It would be very hard to break into living abroad if...
THERAPIST: I see. (Crosstalk)
CLIENT: It's easier if you're already a postdoc. [0:08:56] So we'll see. (Crosstalk)
THERAPIST: And was that at the... I remember there was... that you had said you guys were thinking about some place in Italy.
CLIENT: Yeah, Milan. Yeah, that's... it's definitely in that area.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: Yeah, so...
THERAPIST: Was it a lab at OVO or...?
CLIENT: Nothing specific. I just wanted to move. I like Milan.
THERAPIST: (Crosstalk) Milan.
CLIENT: Yeah. It's a reasonable... the amount of money they give you is a very reasonable amount for what you're... I mean, it's still tight. But it's not...
THERAPIST: Easier.
CLIENT: Yeah. So... and it's an expensive town, but it's not that... it's not as expensive as Providence, I would think.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But with the conversion to the Euro it's going to be somewhere in the 80s in terms of pay, which is, like I said, a lot better...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Even in a postdoc, that's... I mean, I guess because they don't... their stuff isn't funded (sp?), they have a very different way they pay their postdocs. So... hey. There are an awful lot of faculty positions that don't pay 80 a year around here, so...
THERAPIST: Yeah, absolutely. [0:09:55]
CLIENT: And for me that feels very safe. As much as I will miss my family, I will see them. I keep in contact with them as well a lot. But to me it seems like that takes an extra distance away from my in-laws. Not that necessarily his mom would ever come up to see us here anyways. But it's definitely a... you can't step into our lives very easily...
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: Especially if we don't give you any information, like, where we've moved to, kind of thing.
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.
CLIENT: So that would be kind of nice. So...
THERAPIST: Hmm. (Pause)
CLIENT: But... (Pause) That's been pretty much big things, I guess. [0:10:55]
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: I feel pretty good, though. But it's exhausting. It's really exhausting (exhaling). But... (Pause) All of these... the good news is, all the little slights, give me a couple days, I've completely for gotten them, forgetting them, that kind of thing. It just... (Pause) I'm just so physically exhausted, that it's very hard to keep going right now.
THERAPIST: Uh-huh. Like, the stress, and kind of emotional wear and tear...
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: On top of all the health stuff.
CLIENT: [Either that or, like...] (ph)...
THERAPIST: Yeah. Sure.
CLIENT: I don't necessarily know if I'm sleeping especially well either. I don't know. But yeah, definitely, the stress, the emotional wear and tear has been really hard.
THERAPIST: Yeah. [0:11:58]
CLIENT: And... I mean, as it is right now, I already like to sleep a lot (chuckling). So... (Pause) But it's exhausting. It's frustrating. I want to just go home and go to bed.
THERAPIST: Yeah. (Pause)
CLIENT: Which is probably what I might do as soon as I'm done here, is just go home and get to sleep.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: So... (Pause) But... oh, yeah. Other thing.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Oh my God. This is one of those things where... it isn't the actual thing that happened. [0:12:57] It's all the other things that it implies. I fell through my deck. Kid you not, I have pictures and everything.
THERAPIST: Oh my gosh.
CLIENT: Not like my leg went through, but yeah.
THERAPIST: Wow. I mean, you look physically (crosstalk).
CLIENT: I'm fine. I mean, as in my... [most of me] (ph) is fine, but I'm on the ground floor. So... the point though is that... (Pause) The one, to me, I was really looking forward to, I haven't really been out on our deck really all that much. We have a very tiny, tiny, tiny ten by ten deck.
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.
CLIENT: And for a while there it was one of those things where we didn't have any porch furniture. And then it became, we had porch furniture, but we had to get... I needed to make sure that it wasn't... because we bought it off Craigslist, [it was rusted solid through] (ph). So there was the rust. And then we had to get pads so you can sit on it. And it just had been one thing after another with budget-related stuff, because it's been used, and doing all this stuff.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: So finally we have this all set up, right, and everything like that. [0:13:55] So Friday night, we're doing some grilling so that we could go sit outside on our patio, see the Perseids meteor shower...
THERAPIST: Meteor shower?
CLIENT: Which, by the way, when you have a motion detector in the backyard, does not work. We were trying to figure out how long [to sit still] (ph) before the motion detector lights...
THERAPIST: Oh, I see, so you moved, the lights would go on, and you couldn't see anything.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Okay.
CLIENT: Just sit there. It's something our landlord put in, just in general.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: So we were working on that. And I had come up with some ideas on how to hide the sensors, blah blah blah. And as I'm walking back and forth I [hear a] (ph) crack, and then I fall right through. Just my leg, no big deal. It's still pretty startling.
THERAPIST: Yeah, absolutely.
CLIENT: And then I realized there's a bunch of other places that are kind of going through on that.
THERAPIST: And then there's a hole in the deck, yeah. (Crosstalk)
CLIENT: And then I'm thinking, is it because I'm too fat, and I just went through the deck?
THERAPIST: Shitty thing to be thinking.
CLIENT: Yeah. [0:14:54] And, I mean, I am just under 200 pounds. I don't think that's really abnormal. I mean, it's not great for my height and build...
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: But in terms of the amount... I wasn't wearing stilettos, so it wasn't like I was putting that much weight over a very small area force.
THERAPIST: (Crosstalk)
CLIENT: It is...
THERAPIST: As much as I imagine you probably like to dress up for meteor showers, I figured...
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Yeah. Right, no, it just sucks.
CLIENT: Yeah, it really sucks. And so it's... the fact that I had to think about that and then realizing, now, so there's... we went and talked to our landlord and pointed out where it is and all this stuff. And when one of our... there are a couple that live in the house above... it's a house. We have the... live (inaudible at 0:15:34) apartment on the first floor. The man in the... of the two, he's right now at the moment in India. I'm not joking.
THERAPIST: Oh.
CLIENT: And he'll be back in a few weeks. So they'll fix it, but it is one of those things where I feel like I spent all summer hoping for this. And I'm afraid it's going to be October or something like that (chuckling). [0:15:56] And it's kind of a letdown.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: So I really felt like this summer has been the first time it's really been mild. It's hard to get Mike to want to spend as much time outside, because in Kentucky you spend (ph) sort of...
THERAPIST: Right. In the summer you don't really go out.
CLIENT: No. And it's also... it's... even though he' been not in Kentucky more than he has, because at this point he's been sort of the big northeast for 20 years, as it was 18 in Kentucky. But you still... at an early age you're conditioned not to go outside. Even when it's nice outside, you just don't go outside.
THERAPIST: Huh.
CLIENT: And so... apparently. When I was there, when I wanted to walk down the street, people thought that was really weird. I mean, I had a lot of experiences where people were very confused by me actively wanting to be outdoors. Yeah. I understand Australia you don't, because of the smog, you don't go outdoors?
THERAPIST: Right, the smog, uh-huh.
CLIENT: I have a friend that lives in Australia right now, and he lives in one of these giant building arcologies (sp?). [0:16:58] He hasn't been outside in a year.
THERAPIST: Oh my God.
CLIENT: There's grass indoors there, though.
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: They have... I mean, it's one of those, like, every floor... his business in a different... I mean, literally it's a couple... it's a mile of building first of all.
THERAPIST: (Crosstalk). Wow.
CLIENT: And his company's in the building somewhere else. He's on the 57th floor, the company's like 170th...
THERAPIST: Take the elevator to work.
CLIENT: Yeah. But it's like an indoors thing, but they have a park where there's fake light and real grass that they water and everything...
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: Because... and this is one of those places where it is definitely western, it's very... happens a lot with people that just do not want to go outside. So it's really... it's not just one company. It's a lot. It's just... to me it sounds like something out of science fiction. But he sent me pictures. It's pretty amazing. But that makes sense kind of, because the pollution there is so bad, I mean, really bad that you do not go outside if you... I mean, you would not want to take your dog outside because you'd be afraid that it would hurt your dog. [0:17:59]
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: Yeah. So the... but this is Kentucky. I mean, it's not that bad. It does get hot, but it's not that bad. So... but the fact that I had sort of gotten this whole thing set up like this and just this happening to me makes me feel like crap. And it was just one of those things where I'm mostly... like I said, I'm completely okay now. At the time I was more actually just startled, that kind of thing. But it just seems like whenever I try and do something positive in my life, it...
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: This is a sort of metaphor for the larger portion of my life. It's almost like it's being told not to... the universe is trying to tell me not to try and get too uppity with things. Just be happy that things aren't bad. Don't try and enjoy life at all.
THERAPIST: Don't go outside.
CLIENT: Yeah. [0:18:56] So... I mean, I enjoy... going outside is enjoying life, I would think, not that much, but a little bit.
THERAPIST: Sure.
CLIENT: So it's, as you can imagine, kind of frustrating. (Pause) I just... I feel like whenever I have these opportunities to do something that is pleasurable but won't... having things that don't have repercussions to feeling bad about myself in some way...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: This kind of crap happens.
THERAPIST: Yeah. (Pause)
CLIENT: So yeah...
THERAPIST: I think it's a lot of reining yourself in, too.
CLIENT: Yeah, I mean, part of it is the fact that, a lot of times, if we go out and do something that is... that costs money, I spend an awful lot of the time worrying about whether or not we can...
THERAPIST: Right. [0:20:00]
CLIENT: Afford it. So... and so this was something that we could do, and all that. But it just didn't pan out. And (inaudible at 0:20:17) one thing that happens. It seems that, every time I'm able to really do something like that, something steps in, an illness or something steps in. And one of the things that makes me sad about this is because it used to be I was very resilient to this kind of stuff. For a while there I had, I kid you not, a really bad run of luck, where every Valentine's Day something bad would happen. And in terms of something bad I'm talking, like, pipes bursting such that, where I was living, I had to get the plumber to come in and cut a hole in the wall to make things stop. One of my dear friends was hit by a drunk driver, so we ended up spending Valentine's Day basically in the ICU.
THERAPIST: Oh my God.
CLIENT: I mean, it was every year something bad. And it was not a big deal, and the thing is we used to laugh about it, be like... about the fact that, oh no, Valentine's Day's coming up. Are we paid up on the home renter's insurance or whatever?
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: And that's the thing that really, on some level, bothers me, is the fact that I used to be very... I used to take the bad things and sort of... it wasn't even like the snarky laughing I do right now about it. It was actually just more of a good-natured, oh well, that's sort of the way things kind of go at this point in life. And now I'm (crosstalk)...
THERAPIST: [When you] (ph) have a little more emotional reserve, you can do that.
CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause) It's... I don't mind being broke. I just don't mind being desperate at this...
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.
CLIENT: And... (Pause) [0:21:59] Yeah. Other things like that, just it's so... it's a lot to have to bear all at once. (Pause) So... (Pause) But... (Pause) It does feel like, in general, that my emotional reserve is depleted all the time right now. And I don't know... and what I'm a little worried about is, what's going to take to get it back. Or is it going to come back? [0:22:57] I don't want to one of those people that flips out on people constantly. (Pause)
THERAPIST: I would guess it would come back when you'd have a little more kind of emotional breathing room. Things are easier. So (pause) under so much stress...
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: Of various kinds.
CLIENT: Yeah. [0:23:59] I feel like I have so much that I have to manage.
THERAPIST: Uh-huh. (Pause)
CLIENT: But yeah, it sucks. The only problem is that I'm letting myself get stressed out over the fact that I am worried that my stress level is due... I find myself getting anxiety about the fact that I am... have a really short fuse.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: Now, that's something that's not especially productive, but I can't really stop.
THERAPIST: Uh-huh. (Pause)
CLIENT: It's being anxious about being anxious, I guess.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: Or frustrated about being frustrated.
THERAPIST: Yeah. [0:24:57]
CLIENT: I just... I just feel really good shutting this kind of stuff down. And I don't know if I'm shutting it down to the point where I'm just keeping it all inside, so it got worse, or not? I don't know.
THERAPIST: [The hunch] (ph) is things are just easier...
CLIENT: Probably.
THERAPIST: And so you just have more kind of resources emotionally. You're not... when you're being pounded on 10% of the time instead of 60 or 70% of the time, it's just easier to deal with stuff.
CLIENT: That's probably (crosstalk).
THERAPIST: I would guess you're not fundamentally different other than the situation you're in.
CLIENT: I mean, there are these different periods of time in my life where, at least chemically, I am more quick to anger due to more or less steroids or...
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: More or less thyroid medicine, but this isn't... I mean, I am like this. [0:25:57] But I wasn't... I'm not significantly different than I was in July.
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. Right.
CLIENT: So I... but I sometimes have to [look and] (ph) account for that kind of thing. It's not significantly different from that point, so...
THERAPIST: Yeah. It's really not every week that you almost quit your job.
CLIENT: Everyone was pretty shocked. So yeah.
THERAPIST: I mean, this is sort of a bellwether of your degree of frustration and kind of had-it-ness.
CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause) And then (pause) (exhaling) I don't know. It's just... I know that I can't be in fury long-term. [0:26:58] Statistically, I could not be getting the worst customers all the time. I'm only there 12 hours a week.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: Therefore... well, not that. But the point is that, it can't be that I am getting that many... the sampling of me getting all these bad people can't be always there.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: So... although a lot of people do say that I'm extremely patient. So maybe I just...
THERAPIST: I guess the customers are randomly assigned to the...
CLIENT: It depends. It depends on a lot of stuff. Sometimes based upon talent and skill. Sometimes based upon requests. Sometimes it's... there's a lot of things, but usually, I mean, above and beyond that point, at that point (inaudible at 0:27:47) usually is randomly assigned, though I had been getting people more and more often lately, which is I think part of the problem... is they are coming in, wanting to learn how to do something extremely complicated and very hard when they're missing massive... on top of it, they already have a project. [0:28:07] And they're already down to the wire kind of on it, and they kind of don't have the basic skills of clicking and dragging. And I have to teach them professional video editing? And they actually...
THERAPIST: I see. Like, oh my God, I've got to figure out how to do trigonometry in order to get my building project done. But I don't really know algebra or how to add, so much. And I have a half an hour.
CLIENT: Yeah. And it's worse than that sometimes. Also... yeah. I recently had somebody who... she was a children's book author, seemed like a nice lady. But she... and this is sort of... this is again one of those things where just... I don't know where these people get these ideas at all. They have this idea that the important thing is owning the software and not necessarily... and I always tell people, the most expensive thing about, for example, learning Photoshop, is not the $800 for Photoshop. [0:29:00] It is the roughly 200 hours it will take to learn enough to be able to feel like you can do things okay without being taught on how to do something.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: It is 200 hours for Photoshop.
THERAPIST: Wow.
CLIENT: Yeah. And on top of it... because there's a whole lot of background about color theory and what this means and what this alpha is and levels. I mean, there's a lot of (inaudible at 0:29:19) a lot of everything that you need to know on top of it. So it isn't just owning... and on top of it a lot of people think, well, why isn't just a couple of clicks to fix the photo? I'm like, you don't understand. Retouching a photo could take all day to get it the way you want it to be.
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: And some things it is far more about skill than anything I can teach you, because I couldn't necessarily do it. It's about some people are better at drawing birds than other people. But nice lady coming in, this and that. And she's like, well, I really... I feel like I want to be able to make this video in Final Cut Pro which is... that's what Lord of the Rings was made in, just to give you an idea of how complicated... [0:30:02]
THERAPIST: Oh, really? Wow.
CLIENT: Yeah. That's one of the things I teach. And she's like, because I'm going on tour, and I really want something that looks professional-looking. And all the other stuff I see doesn't look as professional-looking. Well, the software isn't what makes it professional-looking. It really is having a... almost like a curator's eye as to what's something looks good and what's not. And...
THERAPIST: Right, it's like, when somebody's got a really good pen, it doesn't make them really good at drawing.
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: And it's not even just being... having the natural drawing skills. You spend a lot of time learning and understanding, okay, well, this is what perspective is. And this is how you... there's so much beyond that point, but it's not... coming in because you need to do something for the first time in life because you want to make a whatever for a... for something because you're going to go on tour...
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm. Right. [0:30:58]
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: I see. So people vastly underestimate what's involved...
CLIENT: Yeah.
THERAPIST: And assume that, oh, it's Microsoft. It must be, [you point, a few clicks, and] (ph) (crosstalk).
CLIENT: Yeah, or if they saw somebody do it with a few clicks it's often because they can tell what is only a few clicks and what is not. There's tons of things that look like they'd be much harder than they are...
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: And vice versa, I guess.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: But it's also just knowing... there's a lot of intuition that you just need... I mean, over the years you just pick up. And it's not something that can be just immediately... what looks professional is not... that is something that is a learned behavior. It's not something I can teach somebody very quickly. And there isn't one real good answer. [0:31:57] So... and that kind of stuff has just been happening a lot more, where people... I don't know what happens. Because we don't really sell software from Microsoft any more in the store, it isn't like there's somebody on the floor selling somebody the $1200 video editing software, and they're going home with the box, and they're coming in to see me. We're not doing that. So it can't be, like, I could go to somebody at the store and say, hey, did you properly talk to them at all before you sold them this...
THERAPIST: Oh, I see, yeah.
CLIENT: Almost everything goes through the app store. So it's not... it's something that the person went and did at home or made a decision of... so there isn't even a point where I could short... for me in the past if somebody did this I could immediately... because with Photoshop you can still kind of have them... we don't really sell many of them anymore. But a lot of people buy it online. But it isn't like I immediately stop and say, hey, who talked to you about this, because this is not the right thing. Often I can't get [us to refund] (ph) their money, but at least I can make sure that the next time I have... someone darkens my door, they're not pissed because I told them that they're not ready to do this yet, because we haven't really mastered the fine art of cutting and pasting yet. [0:33:00] I'm not joking about these things. I am not, in any way.
THERAPIST: It's ironic, but I believe you, yeah.
CLIENT: (Chuckling) Yeah. And I have met people that... seriously, they are ready to learn how to... they want to design their own house in various different CAD programs and have yet to figure out how to make folders. That kind of stuff. And not because they're messy, because they're just jumping way ahead.
THERAPIST: I see.
CLIENT: Yeah, it's not like they haven't learned how to make folders because they've never learned how to organize their stuff.
THERAPIST: Yeah, they're just that inexperienced with [how to operate] (ph) (crosstalk)...
CLIENT: Yeah, or at the very least that I'm willing to take risks on how to... like, oh, I wonder if I just keep looking at these menus maybe I'll find something. [0:33:54] And it seems like we're getting so much more of that. And part of it's the larger market share. Part of it's just... I think that people just sincerely believe that... and it's like... that they've been told that they can do anything.
THERAPIST: Mm-hmm.
CLIENT: There are limits to all of this. There's talent. There's an interest. I'm a... you have to have a... what... that there be a desire to do something with it. You have to put the work in afterwards.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And it just... although I do have some people that I assign homework to, because I'm like, hey, before you come back, this is what you need to do. And there's some people that there's just so much before that point that they are unwilling to hear, they do not understand these things. Therefore they can't... they're not ready for this. [0:34:54] And so it's frustrating, because I used to be... I used to think that it was just because I... I was really great at talking people out of it, but it was mostly because I talked them out if because they have been told by the masses that anybody can edit their photos or something like that or whatever. It's... and I don't like to withhold information. It's not like I'm playing a... there are people who are little jerks who ... they've decided that they're going to make the decision of what something is for the... I mean, not at Microsoft as much. It does happen. But I have been to other technology stores who've made the decision for somebody else as to what or what is not in their grasp all the time, or what they can and cannot do.
I don't want to withhold information. It's not that. And I'm not trying to decide, oh, well, this person obviously is not... I'm willing to keep going. The problem is that after a while, because of the fact that I'm doing that and I'm not giving in to the easy being snarky about things, I think it's just bleeding into me. [0:36:04] And so... and... (Pause) (Exhaling) It's just... like I said, it's very (inaudible at 0:36:12) everything is just wearing very thin. (Pause) And so, yeah. So (pause) I guess it's probably just at the point right now where I should think about either looking for a different industry or making some way so that I can control the people that I have in... come in some way or doing (ph) something else or whatever. [0:36:54] And it just... it's that it's...
(Phone sound)
CLIENT: Excuse me. (inaudible at 0:37:03) this is so embarrassing (inaudible at 0:37:05). Okay. Hold on. I guess I'm almost done here, so I'll just wait for that. (Pause) Oh. I'm just... (inaudible at 0:37:33) right now.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And I keep trying to tell myself, well, what am I supposed to say to somebody who's... well, [I'll try and flip it around in terms of this] (ph), but do I say to somebody who's kid isn't very good at something and... like math or something like that, and just being like, you know what? Honestly, this is not their forte, maybe you should try something else. [0:37:57] No, I mean, some keep going, [plugging in] (ph) with them. So I just keep doing this. So occasionally I get people... more than occasionally I get people that are abusive and mean. And yeah. Or at least, at the very least, decided that I wasn't very effective because they couldn't get what they wanted to get done. And, although when they fill out the forms about how I was as a trainer every time, most of the people do have a pretty good overall understanding of it? It so kills me when I get that kind of stuff because it affects my job, it affects my raises and things like that. And I still have... I mean, right now I have an extremely good record, that... extremely good.
THERAPIST: Well, that's good.
CLIENT: But still, I mean... (Pause) [0:38:58] My rating... the only time that... I think I had two months where I didn't have 100% rating in terms of people saying I was good at my job. But then, when you start doing that, it's like the number of days without injury kind of thing. You don't like it when people break your... I'm not a perfectionist and all, but...
THERAPIST: Well, I would imagine [from your mom] (ph) but just from other things you've said that (pause), no matter how much you know, it's not your fault, and the person's being an asshole.
CLIENT: I still have to sit with them for an hour.
THERAPIST: Yeah. Well, I would imagine it still feels shitty. You still have to sit with them. Maybe at some level you feel like there's something you should have done different or... I don't know if you question yourself, but it become a really crummy thing, no matter how much it's all about them being an asshole and really has nothing to do with you. It's, I imagine, in the moment really... [0:39:56]
CLIENT: And then they come back the next day.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: Yeah. (Pause) Back in Cincinnati I had the ability... I actually had... and I'm sure I... I had the ability basically to, when people got all fussy about this, like, oh, I don't like this computer anymore and this and that... I used to have the ability to be like, okay, I realize that you're past the warranty, your return period. I return every cent of your money right now. We used to do this, the equivalent of don't darken our door again, because if they get to take back, not just for their lessons, but for the whole computer, because we knew sum costs. We just... this person is not going to benefit from us, and it's going to be worse than...
THERAPIST: I see. Yeah.
CLIENT: I don't' have that power any more. And I think that on some level, even though I used it very rarely, having that power of being able to say, okay, well, I will return everything... it's... because they always play the game of, oh, I'm going to return this, to get what they want. [0:40:59] Trust me, I made an awful lot of money in undergrad playing economics games in which you had to basically more or less find a way to be the person with the advantage to get what you want. I am much better at that than any of these people. They have amazing tells. And so I would be like, okay, well, that's okay. What I'm going to do is get the paperwork filled out. Let's get everything cleaned up so we can put this back in the box. And we'll just call it even then.
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: And, trust me, they're like, oh whoa (sp?), wait a second.
THERAPIST: (Chuckling)
CLIENT: I'm like, oh. What? You have no intention whatsoever of returning this? Really? Because...
THERAPIST: Yeah.
CLIENT: I've done that with a car, and I was perfectly okay with walking away. It was back with my old Mercedes and got exactly what I wanted, not... because I knew, and I was okay with walking away with it. Yeah. So... but the... that's... I think on some level not having that escape valve...
THERAPIST: Yeah. [0:41:57]
CLIENT: They don't do it for lots of reasons, one of which is, I guess, they can't trust us to do it anymore?
THERAPIST: Yeah, I would think there's also something about sort of confidence in having some power or authority that...
CLIENT: Yeah. I can take back a six-month-old machine, or [I'll come in] (ph), it's almost a year old or whatever. And you're like, let's call it even. We're ending this relationship now. That's fine. But, when I'm forced into it...
THERAPIST: Right.
CLIENT: I could probably ask for it. But the point, though, is when I had that power I didn't have to... in that case. I could be the person making the call on that. I think it did help. So...
THERAPIST: Well, [I imagine] (ph) it put a floor under what could happen.
CLIENT: Yeah. So it did feel good, very slightly, to have somebody ask me not to leave.
THERAPIST: Good.
CLIENT: That wasn't why I did it in any way, shape, or form. [0:42:58] In fact I never expected they would, not a clue. I was ready to walk away at that point and just... I need to fill out some forms for my two weeks' notice, done, because I don't believe in the... that kind of thing specifically about my job. It's not like they could do anything to change it anyways. But yeah. So...
THERAPIST: Well, we should stop for now.
CLIENT: Yeah. I will see you next week.
THERAPIST: (inaudible at 0:43:23).
CLIENT: Is that the Labor Day weekend, [or no] (ph)?
THERAPIST: No, Labor Day's the following weekend.
CLIENT: Okay.
THERAPIST: I'm actually in, except Tuesday after Labor Day weekend (crosstalk).
CLIENT: Okay, great. No problem. Hold on. Okay. (Pause)
THERAPIST: Do you have the door, or...?
CLIENT: I've got it. (inaudible at 0:43:48) I left Roxy (sp?) behind.
THERAPIST: [Take care, Debra] (ph).
END TRANSCRIPT
