What's the Point

I'm happily ensconced in Starbucks, in a nice comfy chair and there are four other comfy chairs around me. Another woman comes in, puts her stuff on a chair and a sidetable and goes to order her drink. There seems to be some issue, so she comes back for something and then returns to the till. After quite a conversation she comes back and I can tell she is pissed off. She grabs her stuff and starts to storm out. I had noticed earlier that her sunglasses had fallen on the floor behind the side-table. So as she storms by, I'm trying to catch her attention saying "Excuse me", when I finally do, she turns with a very pissed off look on her face. I quickly tell her about her sunglasses, and she changes course, comes back picks them up, mutters a thanks, and storms out the nearest door.

From the snippets I can hear from the barristas, there was some issue with her Starbucks card and they tried to explain things to her and she wasn't getting it. But my question is... what's the point of the storming out? What's the point of getting pissed off like that? What's the point of making a scene? At least she didn't swear and yell at them, which is definitely something. But I know that when I'm pissed off, all of that stuff doesn't really make a difference. There's really no point to it. Storming out and not having my hot chocolate would put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. So, why not just go with the flow and roll with the punches?

But it's amazing how often we get into an upset over something. Little things, big things... waiting in line too long at Safeway... getting cut off in traffic... finding something sold out... whatever it might be... we get upset... It's natural. But then we can learn to live in the upset, or we can shift out of it. Living in the upset is painful and all about suffering. Living in the upset and making it bigger and deeper and wider is just yucky. But we have the choice. We can get upset and then shake it off... or we can start to wallow in it deeper and justify it to ourselves that we have every right to be upset and anybody else placed in the same position would be upset too... and we have every right to stay upset and keep being upset.

Yeah, right....