Pointless point scoring, belligerence, and self-induced stress

[paruses]

Broad brush stroke - yet another person is now in the line between my end client and the fee that I get for my work. These people run the payroll and pay my money into my pension. They do not want to do any more than have the software they licence come to life every month and take a fee for it. They need to forward an email containing a few details each month to my pension company. I have provided this but they don't read things and email back asking if I could forward it and all sorts of back and forth (a mixture of laziness, incompetence, and indifference). I rang the pension people yesterday to allocate the money and  decided I would ring them in future each month. It takes about 5 mins and means I won't be stressed with this never ending battle to get someone to do something I can do (but shouldn't have to).

But I do have the opportunity to keep mailing the payroll person (it's a one man band who has set up to cash in on things and is clearly a mate of the also shitty agent), getting them to fill things in and generally taking up their time to make them do the paperwork even though it won't be necessary.

Typing this I am even more aware that I am driving 10 miles out of my way to kick a wasps nest; it won't be stress free for me or even satisfying, probably. My mind will spin off imagining coming out of the high courts pumping my fists in the air while the press photograph me having won a landmark case that doesn't exist and all sorts of imagined conversations where I Have The Last Laugh. In my head I will fire off emails to their responses and keep them dancing around but I know that for every mail I get from them I will have a spike in blood pressure and feelings of intense annoyance.

If someone else were telling me this I would tell them not to bother - the other party won't care and you'll just cause yourself stress.

Two questions: how belligerent are you when it comes to scoring an imaginary point? Second is what tactics do people have to rise above this sort of thing?

Am also happy to hear of minor annoyances like this that people have - just typing this out has been cathartic so you never know.

[Paul Calf]

Second is what tactics do people have to rise above this sort of thing?

Apathy and laziness. It works amazingly well.

[Buelligan]

I suggest getting routine, just a box-ticking email or something that you keep a proper record of, to make sure that your paperwork pensions-wise and so on is up to snuff (and maybe, there's some kind of evidence, if you encounter a problem long time down the road, that you can use to evidence their uselessness).

Other than that, good for bad is my rule.  You have no idea how shittily people like cleaners are treated (you probably have no idea), if you let it get to you, being treated as if you're invisible, sub-human (at best) and a lot worse, your self-respect, everything, would die or you'd have to kill them.  So give good for bad, be mighty, stay in touch with your calm, righteousness, let that white noise million little pricks float off you, hardly noticed.  A river cuts through a mountain and continues on its way, a thing of grace and beauty.  This is not a even a mountain - that's the ticket, IMO.

Still, paperwork in order, even if it's just you noting they're not stepping up.  Can't hurt.

[paruses]

As it happens I do know specifically how cleaners are treated - I even still do a cleaning job on the side just not for shitheels - and is one reason I have elected to go for my current trappings. But I was more interested in how people deal with sudden moments of annoyance and then move on. Or rather how people choose their battles and what minor infringements have lead to 100 Year Wars.

Apathy and laziness. It works amazingly well.

I applied extreme apathy today and it has worked wonders.