Surviving death

I went through a painful week.
I had to deal with this really annoying customer. He was trying to get a refund for his broken leg, because it failed to serve as a crowbar. I tried to explain to him that we don't have any spare legs in stock, since our branch hospital isn't that big, so he should address to our Head Hospital. He didn't like that and started yelling at me more or less, but rather more than less, incoherently.
I hung up because I was needed in the operation garage to explain to another customer that it is not possible to replace his heart with a green 12 cylinder diesel engine.
We ran out of the green ones yesterday. He then also started yelling at me more or less, but rather more than less, incoherently.

Many people always get off their initial topic when getting angry about something. Some scientist say this is due to the limited mental abilities (and the lack of any knowlegde about platinum based nanocells for semi-purposeless use in quantum medicine) of normal humans, but most of those scientists are elitist smart-asses.

Despite their hateful attitude, they still have a point there. If you have ever watched someone being really furious (best enjoyed at a safe distance of at least a bit more than armlength, so you won't get involved in severe fist-to-face complications), you surely noticed the tremendous amout of energy the person is wasting on pointless tasks like smashing furniture or learning French.

Of course, all this energy has to come from somewhere; in most cases it's sanity that has to bear the reduced power supply. The worst thing you could do at this stage is pointing at the raging person and laugh.
There are, however, three things you can do in order to survive the rampage.
Sit-and-Care, Sit-and-Bear and Sit-and-Stare.
The last one is the easiest, because it's almost effortless to sit still and create an air of mostly unoffending indifference. Just sit and stare at a random point anywhere nowhere near the person and their surroundings.

Sit-and-Bear is for all the masochist out there, who love to get a nice beat up from time to time (This method may become Lie-unconsciousely-on-the-floor-and-Bear at some stage, but you'll have managed the worst part by then, so don't worry about that)

Sit-and-Care is hard to do, but can have astoundingly positive results. The general idea behind it is to pretend you'd care about the persons feelings and thus try to confirm them in their temporarily distorted opinions. Eventually, you will have to stand up and smash some precious porcelain to assert your point in a physically convincing way. If you do well, you'll have finally found someone who helps you to move into that nice new flat.

Cheers
Tim