The Most Important Lesson I’ve Learned About Being Angry
And how it changed my life, just a bit.
“Emily. What are you so scared of?”
It was late 2016. We were in the middle of the dinner rush at the Ruby Tuesday where I worked, and I wasn’t scared of nothing. I was mad. I was so mad, I was ready to throw the misplaced medium steak, now cooked to leather, at whoever had lost it. Or whoever was closest.
I was also grieving. My grandmother had passed away a month earlier. The family was preparing her house — the hub of all our birthdays, holidays, and lives — to be sold. My brother had lived there for years, caring first for our grandfather and the for her as they had grown ill, and was trying to accept the fact that he would be living with his parents again. We were spending more and more of our evenings coping by watching Disney movies and drinking the liquor and soda left in the house while we still could. Wasting is a sin, after all.
So no, I wasn’t scared. I was stressed, and sad, and tired, and just plain angry. And I certainly didn’t have time for my manager’s stupid questions when there were slightly less angry customers waiting to be served.
“What are you talking about?” I snapped back at him, so mad I was ready to cry. I only ever cry when I’m angry, which has never been a help. “I’m not scared, I’m just… Frustrated.”
“I can see that,” he agreed with a calmness that only made me angrier. “But can I tell you something?”
I can’t imagine the look on my face in that moment. “Right here? Right now? Have you noticed what I’m trying to do???”
He took the spatula out of my hand and took over the grill. As if I couldn’t handle it or something. I couldn’t, actually, but it wasn’t like I was going to admit that when I could plow through it like I usually do.
“I’m going to tell you something a boss of mine told me a long time ago,” he said, still in that calm voice. “Anger is a byproduct of fear. If you’re angry, you’re really just afraid something. So what are you afraid of, Emily? Is it the tickets? You’ve handled more than this in the past, I’ve seen you do it. You did a great job, then. This is nothing to be spooked over.”
I had to step outside of myself and think about that for a second. Now that he mentioned it, I saw it clearly in my gut. In that place kind of behind and underneath where our hearts and lungs overlap. Not a burning rage, but an agonizing fear putting up as much of a front as I was.
“It’s not the tickets, its how long some of them are taking,” I answered as honestly as I could. “There are guests in the dining room waiting on food that should have come out ages ago. I’m afraid they’ll have to wait even longer, and that they’ll be upset with us. I’m afraid that I’m not doing my job well enough. I’m afraid I’ll let them, and the cook team, and you down.”
My manager shrugged. “Well, you haven’t let me down, and you haven’t let our team down, and if the guests decide you’ve let them down its their own fault. You’re doing fine. These things happen, but its nothing to be upset about.”
He handed me back the spatula and turned to leave. “Remember, Emily: anger is just a byproduct of fear. Next time you get mad, ask yourself, what am I afraid of? Confront the fear, instead of getting mad. You can do it. I have faith in you.”
And off he went to do more of his job, so that I could do more of mine.
Mike was, without a doubt, one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. He was the first to really train me for management, and the first to say he saw that potential in me. More importantly than how to count money and take inventories, though, he taught me about how to take responsibility for myself as the leader I knew I would grow to be someday. The way we handle ourselves in the heat of the moment can inspire the people around us to great things, like he did for me in that moment.
What he told me that night permanently changed the way I experience anger. It’s like that one time I sliced my hand open and tried to tape the wound back together with gauze and 15 band-aids so I could keep working like nothing was wrong. I didn’t need a band-aid, I needed five stitches and a good pain killer. I didn’t need a quick fix, I needed attention that mattered. I needed to stop and address the real problem, so that I could heal properly, so I could do what really matters to me: doing my job, and doing it to the best of my abilities.
Anger is the band-aid, our way of patching things over, but not nearly enough to close and heal a serious wound. Fear, itself, is not the sutures we need; rather its the act of looking that fear in the eye, admitting that it is there and overcoming it, that binds the wound shut and allow it to heal so that life can go on.
I don’t think I’ve been truly angry about anything in years. I’ve been too busy asking myself, what am I afraid of? Nine times out of ten, it’s some form of failure. That I won’t live up to someone’s expectations — a customer waiting on food, a boss who I’m trying to convince I’m trustworthy enough to promote, that I’ll look foolish and incompetent in front of people who are counting on me.
The stakes are high in my line of work. Orders get misplaced, people who are less serious than I am don’t pull through, inventory goes bad or runs out, and equipment breaks. There’s a lot that happens worth getting angry about. All I am is inwardly afraid that my team and I won’t be able to do our jobs as best I know we all can.
And, in the process, fail in the mission I know God called me to carry out.
Ten times out of ten, those fears are easy to quell by simply looking around, and by looking back at how far I’ve come. Tickets are moving slowly, but the food is being served. Everyone ate, no one died, and no one went to Hell. The ice cream machine may still be broken, but the water and gas are running fine. That best-selling item sold out hours ago, and a server who just came on shift sold one, but the guest is willing to order a substitute. A cook never showed up and didn’t bother calling to warn us, but the rest of us can pull together and make it work.
Shit happens. It happens all the time, but we can handle it. I can handle it. I am strong, and my team is strong, and as long as one of us is there we can happen, too. Its nothing to be spooked over.
If Christians who still rally against gay marriage stopped and asked themselves why that notion makes them so angry, what fears might they find? If people on either end of the vaccine debate asked themselves what frightens them about their perceived outcome, what agreements could they come to? How differently could the night of June 17, 2015 have gone, if Dylann Roof had stopped to wonder if white supremacy had made him fearful, rather than furious?
Anger is a delicate weapon. The apostle Paul advises the church in Ephesus, “Be ye angry, and do not sin”, in a passage about speaking the truth to one’s neighbors. Like a band-aid, anger has its place; but its is not meant to be a lasting one. It is a God-given feeling, which He even expressed during His time on this earth, and meant to be felt. But it is meant to be the compass needle, pointing us to what truly needs to be done.
So be angry, but don’t get angry. Feel fear, but don’t be afraid. Face it. Look it in its face, and remind it that it doesn’t rule you.
Then, no matter how late that one ticket is, you can be at peace as you finally serve it.
