The Troll returns

Imagine you have two jobs, each with some upsides and some downsides and one day you go to work and all the downsides of the one job have transplanted themselves to the other workplace and added themselves to the downsides of the other job. That's what happened today and I thought my head was going to explode.

The Troll went to the museum this weekend. The same musuem I volunteer at. I thank Jesus I wasn't there that day. But, I'm not thanking Jesus that I had to listen to her whining about her experience there all day at work today.

Here's the thing, the museum has a new addition. This addition sucks (but maybe not as much as I thought it was going to). The museum is overpriced, I'll be the first one to tell you that the addition sucks and the admission is too much. Usually, when visitors come up to me and tell me this, I let them know diplomatically that I'm not shocked that they said this and that I sypmathize with their situation. Then I tell them who to complain to, where they actually might get some action, rather than just torturing the staff with their complaints. If these visitors are nice people, they'll get my drift and complain to the right person, or let it go. Sometimes someone comes up and complains about these things and you try to sympathize and agree but they just won't let it go - that's where the Troll was today, and I couldn't get away from it.

First she stood by my desk talking to my co-workers about it for at least 45 minutes. I missed about ten of it, because I went to the kitchen to get some tea, actually, just to get away from the conversation, but I got some tea while I was there. Then later, I went to get my lunch in the kitchen and she was in there bitching and moaning about it. Everywhere I went today, she was there. I wanted to give her her 30something dollars back just to get some silence, but I doubt that it would have worked and she probably would have gotten bent out of shape if I'd talked to her at all, so I just tried to go to a happy place.
I bet she made the museum staff miserable, I bet the all talked about her when they were discussing all the especially bitchy people they had to deal with that day when they were locking up.
In the past, when I've had to deal with people like that at the museum, people who were totally unreasonable and intensely snotty, I often wondered if they had family who loved them, co-workers who respected them.... if they were just having a bad day or if they were assholes 24/7.... now I understand.