I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

No matter who you are, at one point (or several) during your life, you have an encountered a person, or persons, that makes you want to swear off humanity. The extent of your dissatisfaction with the human race may range anywhere from needing to take a break, to wanting to hide in your room for the night/week/month, or entertaining visions of tossing out your worldly belongings, shedding your clothes, donning some animal skins and living in the forest with the wolves.
For the record, I don't recommend the wolves. It might have been neat-o when Shaun Ellis did it in "A Man Among Wolves," but you are likely to get eaten, and I am pretty sure you'll miss the internet. Wolves don't Twitter or text, and they don't guffaw at cat videos on YouTube.
At any rate, how do we deal with these people in day to day life? When you encounter them, you are baffled they survived childhood, let alone making it this far into adulthood. And if they have children, sweet merciful Jesus, you lament the future of the world and wonder how this startlingly unpleasant person ever managed to breed in the first place. The answer to that is simply: They are not the only person like this.
So you've encountered someone that makes your jaw clench and your head ache. You grind your teeth, and every muscle in your body is tense from the effort you are exerting to not beat this person to death with your shoe. You are concentrating so hard on sending mental hate rays to them, its a wonder you don't have a nosebleed. And yet, for whatever reason, they will not go away. To make matters worse, running away is not an option. Maybe you work in customer service, and this is your customer. Maybe you are a teacher, and this is the parent of one of your students. Or maybe it is your neighbor, and you just know that taking off your shoe and hurling it at their face is going to cause friction for years and will probably end with a 12 foot high privacy fence and several lawsuits.
So how do you cope? How do you endure the next few minutes without resorting to homicide?
Sometimes it helps to attempt to confuse the person by paying a compliment. As soon as they open their mouth, say something along the lines of "Oh my! What a pretty necklace! Where did you get it?!" (Just be sure they are, in fact, wearing the item which you choose to compliment.) At this point, you pretty much just have to hope that by complimenting them you've confused and flattered them enough that they forget whatever it was they were going to pester you with. And for the love of God, if they do forget and start to walk away, don't stand there and gloat, run and hide somewhere before they have a chance to remember.
In customer service situations, you pretty much have to address the issue, regardless. You can't really compliment yourself out of having to help someone with billing issues, customer complaints or really stupid questions. (Yes, they do exist.) In these situations, it is really best to keep your mouth shut, unless it is to sympathize with this person on how terrible everything is and how it is all your fault. Make promises like "I will do everything in my power to get to the bottom of this." or "I will personally advise my manager of this issue and advise them that we should do everything we've ever done completely differently from this point forward." And really, it isn't so much what you promise, it is the conviction with which you state it. The person you are dealing with does not know that "everything in your power" amounts to sneaking to the break room to have a candy bar, and they don't know that when you talk to your manager, it will be to make fun of them. Don't get me wrong, I am all for good customer service, but the above applies to those who make ridiculous requests, or complain fervently about something that seems to work perfectly well for everyone in the universe except them.
Other than that, just smile, keep your cool, bite your tongue if you have to. Not too hard, though, otherwise you'll have to explain why you have blood running down your chin. Just remember, no matter how annoying or aggravating the other person is, they can't hear your inner dialogue or see your mental pictures. So if you want to imagine them being eaten to death by flesh eating beetles, and if that helps you smile, then go for it. We all have our own ways of coping with this world.