I stood behind the counter of the Starbucks where I work, clad in my green apron and all-black attire.

This customer approached and awkwardly ordered his drink. He paid, and as he took his change, he suddenly tensed up and said, “I just donated money to Mitt Romney.”

I was sort of taken aback by his statement. I merely said, “Congratulations.”

He looked at me quite intensely and asked who I was throwing my support behind in the presidential primary race. I debated my answer. Suddenly, I thought of the comic strip “Opus” that I had read that morning. In the comic, a pollster is asking a young man who he is voting for. The man says, “Yogi Bear.”

So I decide to be a smart-ass. “Yogi Bear,” I said.

“Yogi Bear? No…that’s not right. Come on,” he said staring at me intensely. “Who are you voting for?”

I hesitated again. I was trying to avoid any kind of political argument. Political beliefs are deeply personal. Think about the process of voting—when you vote, you are alone and no one sees your choices.

The phrase, It’s not a matter of WHO you voted for but rather that you DID vote, bounced around my head.

Yet there are people out there who are determined to pry this information from you and proceed to lecture you about why you are wrong. How is it wrong to state an opinion?

It really is an unwritten rule that politics is not something to bring up at random moments. Once the topic is brought up, the person who started the conversation starts foaming at the mouth and becomes increasingly more and more annoyed that you do not see their point of view.

That’s not to say that civilized political discussions do not exist. They exist when both parties have realized before the conversation started that they are not going to change the other person’s mind.

Once that rule is established, the foaming will never occur and the two can remain friends. How many times has someone engaged you in a political discussion only for the discussion to take a negative turn and next time you talk to the person, you feel slightly put off by them?

People need to understand that other people have different, and sometimes conflicting, points of view. That’s why this world is great. Great minds do not think alike.

As for the customer in my store, I ended up lying and saying I was a “decline-to-state” voter and hadn’t made my mind up yet. It was the easiest way to avoid an argument.