While this may not apply to you, it does apply to a number of people I know:
"If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole."
It's very interesting to me how many people living in the same places doing mostly the same things can have such dramatically different experiences. My aunt and uncle have always had horrible neighbors. Everywhere they've lived they have horrible neighbors, without exception. My parents are the opposite, they've never had a bad neighbor. Which is more likely, that my aunt and uncle just got super unlucky and my parents got super lucky over about 30 years, or that the way they treat/perceive their neighbors is different than each other?
I know people who always seem to have horrible coworkers out to get them, and customers who are rude as can be. Other people working at the same/similar places almost never seem to have these problems. I met a waiter the other day whose house recently flooded. His response was "Oh no it's actually great, we had an old house, now we get a new house!" I can count on one hand the number of people I know who would have that response. My roommate literally never has a positive experience with any customer service personnel and has to come rant/vent about how rude they were. I have a negative experience maybe 1/10 times, and even then it's just that the person couldn't help me, not that they were rude.
It does sound like from the description of the book that it talks about what you can do to reduce negative interactions, so that's probably a good thing. I suspect people control more about how they're treated in the world than most people think, not to mention how they perceive it. The Epictetus quote above seems like good advice to me.
