The first sentence almost made me give up on the article. But the second one gave me hope :P
A very common and relatively harmless overcompensation is when you feel insecure but you play it too cocky.
I've known several guys like that! And age didn't cure them!
That was a strange cashier. Usually it's customers who are finicky and weird.
Counterattacking most assuredly happens when women criticize each other's looks! I always found it a strange reaction since the truth of a statement doesn't depend on how ugly the person who said it is.
From the things you listed, I think I'm most prone to venting. I don't exactly vent cos I just keep things to myself, but I definitely become less patient and my anger-fuse gets shorter.
Hahahhahahahaha! Oh, God! How delicate in choosing words you are!
I must say that I am a women beauty lover. I always notice beautiful women and point them to my husband. But it turns out that we don't share a taste in common. However, he rarely points beautiful women to me, you know, because I am the prettiest he has ever met :D ... and he is a genuinely smart guy :P
That's a surprise! I thought that you are in a constant nirvana looking to others from your philosophical cloud spreading wisdom and teasing them from time to time :D :D :D
I'm throwing a vicious circle into the balance.
Unfriendly and absent customers produce unfriendly and uninterested cashiers, unfriendly cashiers produce unfriendly customers. The chain of evil can be broken by being consistently friendly, attentive and interested in the well-being of others. One takes up short genuine eye contact to the cashier and the bystanders, appreciates briefly the human being. One appreciates the thousands of times everything goes smoothly and does not exaggerate it when it is not so.
In public space, we are all equally good and bad role models, aren't we?
I don't say that specifically to you. But it strikes me that such stimulus reaction chains are actually quite simple to solve if one behaves surprisingly differently.
For me, this example was also a good reminder to stick to my own advice when shopping the next time :-)