The Problem With Letting Frustration Show

When I was a kid, we would go to Pizza Hut on Thursdays. I don’t know why we ended up there on Thursdays, but for some reason, it always seemed like Thursday was the day. Now, we didn’t do it every Thursday, but when we went, it was on Thursdays.

If you were born in the 80s in the US, then you know that Pizza Hut was the fucking best.

Their pizza was solid, and they had arcade games. It was probably cheap, and they had free refills, which was a selling point, and in the summertime, they did the Kids Reading Challenge, which meant you had to read a certain number of books, and then in return, you got a free small personal pan pizza.

I never read the books. I’ll leave it up to your imagination whether I got the free pizza or not.

Anyways, Thursdays were the day.

So each Thursday, they had some live entertainment at good ol’ Pizza Hut. No, not an acoustic guitarist in the corner chilling the vibe while you burned your tongue on cheese and pepperoni. Their entertainment was in the form of a clown. Each Thursday, a man in a clown suit, with makeup and giant shoes, the rubber nose, the whole getup, would entertain families and children before their pizza arrived, right at their tables.

And this irritated the shit out of Mike Bond. (my Dad)

In fact, like clockwork, we would forget that Thursdays were clown night at Pizza Hut. We would park the car, walk in, and then we’d see that fucking clown making a cat out of balloons at a table, and we would all take a collective gasp. The clown was back, as he always was, on Thursdays.

I assume he had a bigger gig to tend to on Friday or Saturday nights, but on Thursdays, he was on retainer at Pizza Hut on Columbia Center Boulevard in Kennewick, Washington.

Once again, we were faced with the clown, and the Bond party didn’t do clowns.

So one night, my Dad went up to the manager of the Pizza Hut, which I assume was a 20-year-old kid named Kevin, and he said, “Can you please not have the clown come by our table?”

Kevin relayed this message to the clown, and the clown didn’t take too kindly to it.

That particular night, he stayed away from our table. He would walk by and just pretend we weren’t there as he made his way to the clown-friendly tables of families where he could make his swords and snakes and whatever else you make with balloons when you’re a clown. He was jolly, loud, and made clown jokes, and made each table feel welcome at the Hut.

So on this particular night, we were without said clown experience. But the Bond family went to Pizza Hut a decent amount, so it was only a matter of time until we had a clown encounter once again.

A few weeks later, we’re at Pizza Hut, and there are no signs of Kevin running the store. The clown walks out of the back room to a table near us, and he proceeds to say hello to the family, and he starts building some balloon art. This goes on for a few minutes as he exchanges some pleasantries and more. As he begins to wrap up, the Bond table had fallen into a soda and cheese coma and sort of forgot that he was nearby.

Then, he takes a step back and turns towards our table. He walks by, taps his right hand on the table, looks down, then continues walking, and says out loud, “Oh, this family doesn’t like clowns!”

If I hadn’t already eaten my entire personal pan pizza with sausage, peppers, and olives, then I would have choked to death and died right there. In fact, we all sort of put our heads down and did everything we could to resist the laughter. It was obvious the clown was offended. I mean, after all, he’s a clown, and his job was to make the families happy and enjoy their experience, but to hear him burst out with frustration at our table was incredible.

And it created a memory and a laugh that we still talk about today.

I don’t blame the clown because, at the end of the day, he was there to do a job, but you could see the frustration leaking through the cracks that night, and honestly, that’s something most of us wrestle with constantly throughout our careers. We all have moments where stress, resentment, exhaustion, or irritation want to make an appearance, yet the real challenge is figuring out how to keep those emotions from hijacking the situation so you can still show up professionally, do your job well, and avoid creating conflict or giving people the impression that your emotions are running the show.

The hard part about emotions in the workplace is that most people think professionalism means pretending you don’t have any. That’s impossible. You’re going to get irritated. You’re going to feel disrespected. You’re going to sit in meetings where someone says something so unbelievably stupid that you briefly leave your body mentally and wonder if you’re on a hidden camera show. You’re human. The real skill isn’t becoming emotionless. The real skill is learning how to manage those emotions long enough to make good decisions instead of reactive ones.

I’ve watched incredibly talented people completely sabotage themselves over this exact thing.

One bad meeting turns into an emotional email.

One frustrating interaction becomes passive-aggressive behavior.

One moment of feeling overlooked becomes a six-month spiral in which their attitude slowly shifts, and eventually everyone around them notices the change in energy before the person even realizes it’s happening.

Careers are filled with moments where your emotions will try to grab the steering wheel from you.

The clown at Pizza Hut couldn’t help himself. He needed us to know he was irritated, even if he disguised it as a joke. Honestly, I respect it a little. The problem is that in most work environments, people don’t forget those moments. Fair or unfair, perception becomes reality very quickly in professional settings.

The minute people think you’re emotionally unpredictable, defensive, reactive, or unable to handle pressure, they start viewing all your work through that lens. It doesn’t matter how talented you are if people feel like they’re managing your emotions alongside your responsibilities.

Ironically, some of the strongest people I’ve ever worked with weren’t the loudest or most intimidating people in the room. They were the people who could absorb pressure without emotionally leaking all over everyone else. They knew when to pause, when to let something go, when to address something privately, and when a temporary emotion wasn’t worth creating a permanent consequence.

Meanwhile, somewhere out there, I like to think that clown probably went home after his Thursday shift at Pizza Hut, kicked off those giant shoes, and told his wife, “I finally got that family back tonight.”