I've started doing this thing when I get annoying customers. It's a thing where I try to ask myself questions like, "Why are they being the way that they are?" in hopes that it'll make me more calm and understanding and accepting over their petulance of a fucking lipstick, of all things.

"Maybe they're having a bad day," I think, trotting around the store after them while they say things like, "No, I said brown, not brunette," over their shoulder. "Okay!" I call after them, doing my best to sound cheery and not like I'm making faces at my coworkers, desperate faces that are pleas for help, faces which result in genuinely sympathetic faces back from them. "Didn't hear you!" I call, bending over to get what is actually called brunette out of the drawer. "My fault!"

Pretty much I just pretend to be Bob Ross. Everything is happy. Happy trees. Happy lipstick. Happy people on the phone. The mistakes I make are actually birds which will pick me up and scoop me up like the Hobbit that I am, onto better pastures and places where I'm not forced to wipe makeup from the back of someone's hand while she talks on the phone and silently asks me to keep going when she finds a stray black smudge on her thumb.