2525 The Face.
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Everyone puts on the face for work sometimes. There are just some people who have mastered the technique. I’m absolutely terrible at hiding how I feel. Luckily I don’t need to worry about it very much anymore.
I do have to worry about keeping the lights on though, so if you have the means, and the desire, to support my work I encourage you to do so via the links above.
9 Comments
She’s so much stronger than me in this way. I *cannot* put on the face. If I am feeling an emotion or in a funk, everyone around me is going to know about it. I try to mitigate it by being upfront, but it made working retail even more of a hell for me. There truly is a job for everybody, and her skills are particularly suited for her passions. Hopefully she has friends she can take the face off with.
It seems you missed a fairly important part of growing up. Learning to control your emotions is fundamental, I would suggest you stop asserting that it is impossible for you and instead start practicing ways to strengthen your ability to do it.
Or, and hear me out here, we could allow for a life that doesn’t require masking all the time. I have worked retail/customer service most of my life. Frequently the job is the reason I have to mask in the first place.
I also have a problem with your assertion to “learning to control your emotions.” Most of us have never been taught how to do it, nor shown how to properly release them. Add in how much crap women and minorities get for showing any negative emotion, and the men get as much crap for showing any emotion that isn’t anger, you start to see why so many of us struggle with this “simple, childhood lesson.”
The task is not so much to “control” ones emotions but rather to control one’s response to those emotions. Emotions are a useful source of information and true emotional control approaches willful self-delusion. When I was selling popcorn in a theater I was paid to mask my own emotional state and behave as though I was happy to be selling fried grain drenched in fake butter. Actually, I quite enjoyed that job but it makes the point that often a big part of the job is putting on your work face. Later on, working in the mental health field I learned that it is necessary to restrain one’s own emotional reaction while still allowing those emotions to inform your responses to the patient/client.
According to Pinker in How the Mind Works, emotions are one’s top-level directives.
Well, that’s pretty judgy of you. The simple solution to this problem was actually to find a non customer facing job. My coworkers don’t care if I’m less social because I’m having a bad day, they care that I get my maintenance jobs complete by the end of shift. My friends certainly don’t care that I don’t fake being happy around them. There are more things in heaven and earth, Alex, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Someone functioning differently than you doesn’t make that person wrong. I am strong in other ways that Rulette is not. And I am stronger in ways that YOU are not. That is the beauty of having so many different people on this planet.
Spanish Love Songs – “Brave Faces Everyone”
Thinking of putting on [a fake face in public], or on putting on [a fake face or a brave face] at any time, here’s Paul Mccartney’s song, “My Brave Face”.
https://www.songfacts.com/lyrics/paul-mccartney/my-brave-face
….People don’t come to your store, if you’re sad, or angry looking.
….Ain’t that the truth.
Man.