I found a perfect answer the other day almost by accident. I was buying pet food for my rabbits, chickens and cat plus a few other stuff. It was quite a lot of individual items. The sales assistant asked me whether I would rather have a bale of hay than the smaller bag on the counter. They normally only have the bales when you specifically order it, so I was happy to exchange. The exchange didn’t take long.

In the mean time there was a mother and adult daughter behind me. We were the only customers. The mother loudly said to the sales assistant to help her first, she doesn’t want to wait. I turned around and told her everything has been rung up already. She aggressively told me that she wasn’t speaking to me and what she said had nothing to do with me. Uhhm…It did. It is my purchase she wanted to have removed. In my mind’s eye I could see how badly this could escalate as I was quite pissed off by now too and this lady was very aggressive.

Something made me calmly turn away from her, back to the sales assistant and I said firmly: “I am not going to waste my energy on this nonsense.” The sales assistant and I waited in silence and ignored the rest of her ranting, which very quickly quieted down. My bale of hay appeared promptly, I paid and walked out.

I am normally someone who feels I have to stand my ground and defend myself. This was a new way of reacting for me and I was amazed at how much better that worked than anything I have done before. I will remember to use the “not wasting energy on this nonsense” line in future. Not engaging in craziness is good, I discovered.

Thank you for the upvotes. It was quite unexpected. I had a good chuckle at many replies. It seems like there are many good ways of dealing with fools.