Why does customers' anger at decisions I didn't make wear me down?

You did not set the price, the policy, the delay, or the broken promise. Yet you stand at the counter, on the phone, in the chat window, and take the anger meant for someone above you. This wears you down — not the work itself, but the gap between what you can fix and what you must absorb. Here is the trap: you start to feel guilty for decisions that were never yours. You apologize for choices you had no part in. Slowly you carry the company's failures like they are your own faults. They are not. Set that weight down now. You are not alone at this post. Your team faces the same wall, the same script, the same fire. Talk about it together, plainly, and you will find the line faster than you would alone. Where that line sits — what you own, what you hand back — is a decision your team can make together, and hold together.