Yesterday, E- and I go to buy a new vacuum cleaner. And due to one thing or another (mostly I think, cause E-‘s wallet was stolen a bit over a week ago) our credit card was declined. As I had my parent’s credit card info from a previous baby purchase, I thought I would use their card and reimburse them for the purchase.

Ha.

What I thought would be a fairly simple and quick transaction turned into Mr. Sales Guy wanting to talk to my Mommy and Daddy to make sure it was alright to use their card. And while I understood that it was a matter of a type of security check, I was the one who called my parents and he read off the number to them. What kind of check is that? I could easily have called a friend of mine and said, if someone calls, this is you and this is the number to verify.

So instead of just saying, “Forget it. We’ll get everything straightened out with our card and come back,” I was determined to finish the purchase. Why? Cause by that point I was horribly embarrassed and just wanted to get the hell out of there. Plus, my old pal “Run From Conflict” reared it’s ugly head.

Then today. My coworker is on vacation and so I’m filling in for her on one of her weekly tasks. I follow the crappy directions I was given exactly. Only it doesn’t work. So I go to IT to see if they can help. And what do I get? An ass chewing. “Go back and look at the transfer log. If it says it didn’t go through, you did it wrong.” Ok, Ms. Helpful.

So even though I *know* that I did it correctly. And even though I checked the stupid log and did a file search on my computer, I go back and do it again. So I still have a problem. And I go back to IT. And Ms. Helpful get WAAAY short tempered (Why did you put the files THERE???” Which I didn’t do!) and finally hustles me out of her office, instructing me to submit a problem request.

What do I do? I go back to my office close the door and proceed to cry. Because what I *wanted* to do was tell Ms. H that it’s not my fault I had crappy directions, nor that I may have interrupted her and that she should either be nicer or let me know she’s not the person to go to in the future. Which, believe me, she won’t be at all, anyway.

And then another wonderful (she actually is really cool) IT person came to my office to watch me do the procedure. And wouldn’t you know it? It worked perfectly. Which is good but makes me feel like an idiot.

The whole problem is that I just don’t deal with conflict or confrontation well. Heh. Make that, *at all*. I run. I hide. I try to smooth over. But I just can’t deal with the fact that someone may think less of me because I disagree with them. How stupid is that?

Especially since my boss stopped by my office towards the end of my sob fest. And how can I tell him I’m just a big wuss? Hopefully, he’ll believe it has something to with something else that happened and I can leave it at that.

I freakin love Mondays.