Chess Not Checkers

I work for a home health care company assisting the elderly with everyday living. You know, cooking, cleaning, ruuning errands stuff like that. It's not a hard job at all...physically. What I don't understand is how you can be mean, ungrateful, ignorant and just plain full of bullshit to a person who only serves you with the intent of making your life easier!
Once, I was really ready to tell this client about herself real good and walk clean up out of that hot ass house of hers but my 4 years of customer service experience gave me the training I needed to fake being patient with her. Granted it was only enough to make it through the hours I was at her house because believe me, I was hella pissed when I left her house. The whole time I was thinking "This is chess, not checkers."
This saying is something I picked up from my good friend and mentor and I use it before I react negatively to any situation. Honestly, I'm the kind of person who will shoot first and ask questions later especially if my safety or dignity is on the line. Now since I don't carry a gun the shooting is normally done with my words and since I work to feed and take care myself and my family I couldn't really go off on this lady tell her what a bitch she is and how she can take her toilet brush and choke on it before I get on my hands and knees with it. So I'm at work saying over and over in my head "Chess, not checkers. Chess, not checkers."
I'll admit, I didn't really know what it meant in this situation but I did know that I couldn't tell her that I know her and her "roommate" are more than "roommates" and expect my satisfaction to last longer than the moment after I said it. So I desperately ran to B (aforementioned friend/mentor) and told her I was about to lose my religion on this old lady. She carefully explained that this old lady is miserable because she is old and can't take care of herself, she isn't in control of her own life or anybody else's...except me for 3 hours a day so I shouldn't take offense to what she's making me do and this is where the chess comes in.
As an adult, I'm in control of and responsible for all of my actions regardless of what others might try to push me to do. It's my job to analyze the importance of going off, telling people how I feel or just plain putting somebody in what I'd consider to be his/her place and compare it to what I could potentially lose or gain from doing that. In this case I decided the answer isn't going off on the old bag because no matter what I say to her she's still gonna be unhappy. If I go off I'd gain a sense of power or whatever you call the high you get from going off on people but I'd most definitely lose my job.
The answer would in fact be to go harder at my job. How so? Because the lady goes behind and inspects every little thing I do, so if I do more then she'll have to inspect more and her old legs full of arthritis won't like that and soon she'll be pushing me out of her door instead of trying to make me work harder. It might sound harsh to some but oh well. "Some" isn't in this house with her scrubbing clean dishes.
All in all, the lesson can be applied to any life, family or relationship situation. Treat people, not how you want to be treated but how they treat you but remember to play your part and be smart. In any given situation, it's chess not checkers...