Originally Posted by
3speed
And as for the comments about it being self fulfilling, totally not the case. I used to be a really positive person. This job has made me less in general and made me hate our population in general. Yet I still have fantastic customer service and have been in line for a shift manager position for 2 years now as soon as one of our current ones leave. It's not that people are giving back what they're getting from me. I'm very friendly and helpful to them. It's just that they're d-bags.
Somehow I know I'm going to regret jumping into this, but here goes.
If you have become so bitter because some of your customers were rude to you, didn't treat you with the proper respect, or whatever, then you were never a "really positive person" to begin with. What you were was a naive, idealistic noob who became disillusioned because some people said some things or behaved in a way that made you feel bad.
Being a positive person is not contingent upon only having contact with other positive people - if that were so then there would be no such thing. I don't claim to be such a person, but people who are can't be so easily shaken merely by unpleasant social exchanges.
People behave poorly (and we're not talking about violent or destructive behavior here) for all sorts of reasons - perhaps they have to deal with rude customers at their job all day, for instance. Or maybe they're in the midst of some major family/medical/life crisis, and are stressed to the breaking point. And yes, some people are just plain nasty.
My point is this: people are generally emotional, fallable, undisciplined creatures struggling with different issues in their own lives, they didn't just see you and decide, "hey, just for the hell of it I'm going to screw with this guy".
It doesn't necessarily make them good human beings, but it doesn't make them all bastards either.