Ooh, I was fuming!

It takes quite a lot to get me angry, but this did. Between me leaving work last night and coming into work today, someone had put out a whole crate of eggs – that’s 288 boxes of eggs – all dated for the 31st of December.

They needed reducing straight away, but it takes two hours to put stickers on 288 boxes of eggs, and tonight I couldn’t stay late, as I had to come home to write this blog.

I was fuming not because of the eggs themselves – although it is pretty silly to deliver them with such a short shelf-life – but because nobody had thought to tell me so I could come in early to reduce them. I stormed off in search of my manager, ready to spit tacks at him. He held up his hands to fend me off. “I knew there was a crate of eggs,” he said, “But I didn’t know they were dated for tomorrow.”

Fair enough. I excused him and calmed down. But between us, we had to come up with a plan.

In the end, Jake from Bakery put half -priced stickers on fifty boxes and I did fifty before I went off to do the rest of my shift. At the end of my shift, I reduced another fifty. The rest are my manager’s problem tomorrow - because I don’t work on a Wednesday - and he has a plan. Or, at least, I hope he has a plan. We need to get them all sold before the shop shuts at 8pm.

Life throws things at us. Sometimes it’s minor things like 288 boxes of eggs and sometimes it’s major things. A young friend of mine has just found out that his mother has only months to live. It’s a devastating blow. She’s in her early sixties and was fit and healthy as recently as October. This came out of the blue. But, as he said the other night, sitting at our kitchen table, “This is my new normal.”

Things change and we often have no control over what changes and how. Suddenly, we have a new set of circumstances to deal with and we must adjust.

Some people seem better at adapting than others. They cope by making practical plans. While they are busy making plans and acting on them, they don’t have to think and deal with the emotions that come with major change. Others of us are hit with emotions so hard that we find it impossible to make plans. This evening, I had to deal with my anger and express that anger – appropriately, of course – before I could calm down sufficiently to accept the eggs and make a plan.

We can’t change what’s happened, we can only deal with it. And we all deal with it differently, and each way is valid.

 I don’t know what changes you have coped with this year, but I know there will have been some. 2026 will bring yet more changes. I hope they are nice changes for you and that you can greet them with a joyful heart.

I wish you all a happy new year.

Mary

A Moodscope member