What is one specific moment in the last month when your job as a community manager was most difficult?

Make no mistake: Community managers often have to deal with angry people. I work at an ISP, and sometimes people have trouble with their service and they let us know, in no uncertain terms, that they are unhappy. Oftentimes, people will have other things going on in their life that they're stressed about, and they may use your community to vent about that as well. We recently had someone who was dealing with a sick parent at the same time their service was cut off for non-payment. It turned out to be a mistake, and a financially strapped family had their situation worsened. They were hopping mad! This is where the community manager or a moderator has to look past the insults and empathize with someone in a tough situation and do what they can to make it better.

It really depends on the type of community it is. If you're managing the community for a fun product like, say, Red Bull, you may not have many of those negative posts. But if you're providing any kind of product or service where things go wrong -- and they often do -- the angry, sarcastic or just plain annoyed posts may be the most common ones you deal with.