An Attitude Adjustment

The cashier gently suggested that I might consider an attitude adjustment. But she did it so cheerfully that I didn’t even think to defend.


If you just give me the two words ‘attitude adjustment’… a recalcitrant, perhaps nasty child comes to mind, one certainly deserving corrective action. And usually, if someone would suggest that I was the one in need of the adjustment, protest would spring readily to my mind, if not my lips. Today it did not.

I was at the home center, buying shingles for a roof repair, acting on auto-pilot, I suppose. I smiled as I stepped up to check out, and when the cashier asked how I was, I returned a characteristic reply (for me) that included a report on how messy roof repairs can be, how working on a ladder is not my favorite thing, and that it just had to be done…grin and bear it, so to speak. This I shared with her in my inimitable humorous way, of course.


Then she dropped the bomb! She sweetly offered me another way to look at it…an attitude adjustment. And she did it so sweetly that I did not even wince. I even agreed with her that it was only my perspective that made the job unlikeable.


Thank God for cashiers…and for the reminder that I do not have to continue to look at things the same way as I have habitually. I can choose differently. I can change my life.