The Waiting Room Masterclass: How a Friday Morning Oil Change Challenged My Polite Arrogance
How turning toward discomfort in unexpected moments can transform conflict into connection and leadership.
The Power of Turning Toward Discomfort
I have a system for vehicle maintenance. I always schedule my appointments as early as possible on a Friday or a Monday. The logic is simple: it carves out a rare, non-negotiable window to slip on my headphones, drown out the noise, and either reflect on the week that's ending or mentally blueprint the operational challenges of the one ahead.
This past Friday, I was looking for exactly that.
After a failed attempt to navigate the complimentary waiting-room coffee station, I decided to treat myself instead. I dropped a dollar into the vending machine for a Cherry Dr Pepper, found a seat in the corner, and pulled out my headphones, ready to disappear into a playlist.
Then a voice to my left broke the silence.
"How do those connect to your phone?"
I looked up. Sitting very straight in a notoriously uncomfortable waiting-room chair was a woman of indeterminate age, her hair swept up into a neat, clean bun.
I smiled, explaining that they connected via Bluetooth—usually just a matter of toggling a button in your settings. Before I could even ask, she volunteered that she'd have someone show her how to use a pair right after I mentioned they were rechargeable.
I wished her luck, looked back down at my screen, and started scrolling for my music.
Then came the second question.
"What do you do for work?"
In that split second, I realized my quiet morning was evaporating. A conversation was happening whether I had engineered it or not.
A Conversation Was Happening
As leaders, we talk a lot about emotional intelligence and active listening. Lately, I've been challenging myself to bring that same radical presence to the unplanned moments life hands me.
In the past, when a stranger tried to engage me outside of a professional setting, I'll admit I often chose the path of least resistance. I would listen politely, nod, and withhold my truth to avoid confrontation. I used to tell myself it was for some noble purpose—that I was just keeping the peace.
But if I'm completely honest with myself, it wasn't noble.
It was a form of arrogance.
It was the subconscious belief that it wasn't worth my time or that I knew better.
I'm trying to push past those internal biases now. I'm trying to welcome opportunities to engage with an open heart and a wide-open mind.
So I set my phone down.
I turned my entire body toward her.
I decided to step out of the shadows of polite avoidance and be fully present in the moment. I gave her my full attention.
I told her I worked for an online university and had been there for nearly seventeen years. When she asked if I was a teacher, I explained that while I used to be, I now manage a team of mentors who support MBA students from the day they arrive until the day they walk across the graduation stage.
I even shared a bit about my past leadership work with traditional, brick-and-mortar, private religious universities here in Kentucky.
That's when she threw the pitch that clued me in.
This was going to be one of those conversations.
"Are most teachers Democrats or Republicans?"
Inside, my soul braced itself.
I live in a place where my personal views are not the prevailing majority, and high-stakes cultural topics often mean putting up walls.
I told her that, in my experience, it's evenly divided—like most opposing viewpoints in this world.
But she was just getting started.
Her next question went straight for the cultural fault lines.
"What do you think about drag queens reading to children?"
As the mother of a transgender daughter, you can bet that I am uniquely attuned to the LGBTQIA+ community and the issues they face.
My hackles rose instantly.
That protective, mother-bear instinct is real, and it is fierce.
This wasn't an abstract political debate anymore. This was potentially about my child's right to safely exist in the world.
In the past, this is where I probably would have shut down, said something mean-spirited, or simply walked away.
But true leadership means choosing leverage over vitriol.
Instead of letting anger dictate my response, I chose a higher road.
I chose to speak with compassion, protecting my house and my daughter's honor not with rage, but by calmly challenging this woman's assumptions without attacking her humanity.
"Why not drag queens?" I asked gently. "They're just people, like everyone else. They've always existed."
She immediately began quoting Bible verses to me.
Now, if you're going to step into the scriptural arena, you need to be prepared for who you're wrestling with.
I lobbed verses right back, taking her to Sunday school with the very text she sought to weaponize.
I asked her how she could speak words of exclusion when Jesus commanded us, above all else, to love our neighbors.
We moved from there to the Muslim faith.
She was convinced Christianity was right and Islam was wrong, pointing back to her biblical knowledge.
"Do you use the King James Version?" I asked.
She confirmed that she did.
"Why do you think the King James Version is the definitive authority," I countered, "when it was commissioned by a British monarch with political motives and used to reinforce existing power structures?"
She pivoted to intelligent design.
On that point, I nodded.
I told her plainly, "I am a Christian. That is my faith. But I am not so arrogant in my certainty that I believe I have the right to pass judgment on anyone else."
She spoke of the strict law of the Old Testament God.
I spoke of the radical, boundary-breaking love of Jesus and His message of acceptance regardless of what a person believes.
She spoke of obeying the law, specifically referencing a decades-old honor killing. Her details were muddy, but her intent was clear.
I asked her, "Do you value a society where all people are free from religious persecution and allowed the full spectrum of free expression?"
She said she did.
"Then how," I asked, "can you set parameters on the Muslim community in good faith?"
Sitting there, listening to her, I felt a sudden rush of decades-old familiarity.
It reminded me vividly of the conversations I used to have with my peers back in middle and high school—that precise moment in adolescence when you first start wrestling with the universe, trying to separate what you actually believe from the traditions you inherited from your family.
Here we were, two adult women, still dancing around the same ancient fire.
And we kept dancing.
People wandered into the waiting room, heard snippets of our conversation, and promptly found somewhere else to be.
She stated that money was the root of all evil.
I gently corrected the misquote, offering the fuller truth: "It is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of evil."
She lamented that history was being scrubbed from the books.
I agreed with her but gave her the history she didn't see coming: the reality of Japanese American internment camps on our own soil during World War II, alliances built around exclusion, and the devastating truth of how enslaved people were bought, sold, and systematically disenfranchised long after the Civil War ended.
She spoke of the horrors of pedophilia, tentatively trying to direct her bias toward Muslim traditions involving arranged marriages and child brides.
I agreed on the horror of the act but brought the reality right back home to our shared soil.
"I had a classmate who became a wife at twelve years old," I told her. "In the early 1980s. Right here in the great state of Kentucky."
Then the room went quiet.
We sat there in the silence, looking across the space at one another.
We weren't friends.
But we weren't enemies, either.
We were simply two women in an auto repair waiting room, holding opposing corners of a massive, complicated world.
A moment later, the technician walked in and announced that her car was ready.
She thanked him, stood up, and looked at me.
I didn't look away.
I reached out my hand, looked her in the eye, and thanked her for the conversation.
I told her I had genuinely enjoyed it and that it had been a pleasure to meet her.
She smiled, shook my hand, and said the exact same thing.
By refusing to hide, I hope I managed to show her that a Christian woman with a transgender daughter could sit in the heat of a high-stakes conversation, hold her ground with dignity, expose someone to uncomfortable truths, and still wish them well.
We don't have to agree to be civil.
And we don't have to think alike to find deep, necessary value in another person's lived experience.
Sometimes, the oil change is simply the excuse the universe uses to remind us how to talk to each other again.
The Executive Challenge: Turn Your Whole Body
As influential women, we live in a culture that constantly coaches us to build high walls, wear noise-canceling headphones, and look away.
We are taught to protect our peace, optimize our time, and avoid the messy, unpredictable business of engaging with people who don't see the world through our particular lens.
But hiding behind politeness or writing people off before they even speak isn't peace.
It's insulation.
True leadership requires us to step out of our silos.
My challenge to you this week is to look for your own waiting-room moment.
The next time someone reaches out a tentative hand or a colleague asks a question that makes your soul brace for impact, don't look down at your phone. Don't offer a hollow nod simply to get through it.
Turn your whole body toward them.
Be fully, unapologetically grown in that moment.
You don't have to compromise your truth, and you don't have to back down from protecting your house.
But you do have to show up.
We are never going to heal the fractures in our businesses, our communities, or our world by staring at our own screens.
Sometimes, the most radical and influential thing you can do is simply sit in the discomfort, hold your space with grace, and remind another human being what it looks like to listen with an open heart.
Leetta Jackson Angel is an organizational performance leader and changemaker based in Kentucky, specializing in higher education operations, strategic mentorship, and workforce transformation.
