The human psychology is subject to both positive and negative reinforcement. So I had to ask "am I lower looping?" Letting negative feelings reinforce themselves? If so, how can I break out of that and get into the upper loop?
Then I had the realization that my frustration level was building because I kept having to deal with incompetent people.
At work, someone asked the same question the third time.
Another idiot contacted our university collaborator with questions that can be answered internally.
A third idiot wasted our money testing something that was not stable, when I alerted his team of the stability issue a year and change ago and they promised to test it.
Our consultant wasted my time in discussion of a path forward by subsequently proposing to further discuss with the broad team. Them he had the audacity to call me, not to apologize, but to convince me of his actions and to waste more of my time.
Then I had to deal with insurance, who took away a good driver discount for a minor fender bender, because they paid 18 hours of auto technicians time to repair a $20 part on a 2002 Honda Civic. So I decided to repair my car. They did not make a rental order for me because they thought I was not going to repair my car because I thought the other guy had minor damage. And then they wasted some more of my time to argue that they won't cover my weekend rental, because the shop would start working on the car on Monday. They made me wait while negotiating with the shop, who was nice enough to cover the weekend. They set up their policies for idiots who apparently loves to spend time in small rental cars. What about people who work and can't find time to drop off their cars? Anyways, after spending all the extra time, they 1) refused to address my existence and up the rental under Carleton, and 2) went ahead to pay for the weekend rental.
Then I found out that a city permit is required to install a.c. Went to the permit office and this idiot wasted half an hour of my time lecturing me about how contractors should apply, not home owners, when the forms state that home owner can and should br resposible for their now homes. He says that the home owners don't have all the info and printed a five page form to fill out before he issues the permit. I scanned the form, saw check boxes foe school, office buildings etc and nothing for a residence. Then noticed the form was for nonresidential buildings. He apologized fot prong out the wrong form and went to print the equivalent form for residential. I took a look and asked about the concert of 'disturbed area' for furnace replacement. He did not know the answer (does this guy know anything)? His colleague finally told him that there was no extra form for furnace and a.c. After wasting time, he looked up the contractor and found the license expired. So I wasted all this time and had to go back to get the permit.
It was not a case of negative reinforcement when I just kept having to deal with incompetent people who couldn't do their jobs and wasted my time. This begs the question: is it really that rare for people to know their job? I am not even asking them to be good at it and take pride in it. I am not going to blame myself for getting into a bad mood if there is insufficient time to recover between dealing with incompetent people. I do think this kind of bad luck comes in a bunch. At least I recognizes it now.
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