How to Deal with Annoying People - or Not

On a recent trip to Target, a woman went to pay for her items at the 10 items or less cashier. She clearly had more than 10 items and continued to shop for things as the associate rang her up.

After her transaction was completed and the next customer was being helped, this woman interrupted to say that she was just going to buy some Orbit gum and may she please be rung up after this transaction was done.

Imagine the nerve of someone like that! Yet, scenes like this happen every day. People like her exist everywhere regardless of the language being spoken, the culture, the country. There, simply put, are difficult people in this world.

These are the ones that crawl under other people's skins and are what helped generate the whole self-help craze.

The problem is that most of these annoying people do not end up helping themselves or their odd behavioral quirks. Instead, they leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves and our sanity. Thus, enter the self-help books for the people who do not have the problem but our forced to have to cope with these annoying people.

While there aren't any real figures on how much the "how-to cope" industry brings in each year, the numbers are probably quite high.

Books are published on the subject such as Mark I. Rosen's Thank You for Being Such a Pain: Spiratual Guidance for Dealing with Difficult People. The ridiculousness that someone should plop down their own money because someone else has a behavioral problem is just that, ridiculous.

Oftentimes, most people tell each other to empathize with the person being a pain. Tell yourself things like the individual does not know any better and it may help to avoid the headaches associated with people who are jerks, rude, offensive or whatever the case may be. However, sometimes, if the person is an adult, then they really should know better and saying something may be the key that enables them to grow to become a better person.