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Don't yell at waitresses. You look like a jerk and it blows investments.
- jschuur 16y agoI just hope they reminded the VC exactly why they were leaving, so he had a chance to think about his attitude.
- g0atbutt 16y agoHe said something along the lines of "I'm very sorry for my friends rude behavior. Nobody should should act like that". I think the angel investor got the point.
- jschuur 16y agoToo subtle. Easy for him to think it's fine to treat a waitress that way and that he can still function with 'real people'. He needed to be reminded that this is a sign of a fundamental character flaw. Not to rub it in, but on the chance that this might lead him to redemption.
- bjelkeman-again 16y ago@jschuur Don't you think the investor will take the easy way out and not shout at people when discussing investments, but not actually change as a person? I think these type of behaviors are deeply set. They can be changed, but I think it is more likely that the investor learns to be more subtle when discussing with an investment target, rather than actually becoming a nicer person, which requires a real change of character.
- jschuur 16y agoI agree that this points to deeply rooted a deeply rooted mindset and behavioral issues. At the same time though, this is an opportunity to do the right thing and attempt to show the guy that this is a fundamental and not compartmentalized problem he has (not that I'm criticizing the entrepreneur here). Maybe, over time, this will resonate with him, when he sees other people's reactions when this happens again. If not, you've done all you could.
- Dylanlacey 16y agoExactly. Doing nothing because "It won't help" is tacit acceptance. Only by slowly wearing away at the behavior can you change it, but you still need to try.
- waqf 16y agoIf the investor hasn't learned these things before now, there are good reasons to suspect he won't change overnight. Even if he thinks it over, he may do a cost-benefit analysis and come to the conclusion that for him, personally, it works out better to shout at the waitress. Possibly because the coffee really is that important to him. Possibly because it weeds out business partners who don't like his style.
- keiferski 16y agoI just wanted to comment on the excellent picture choice. Didn't realize it was a cup of coffee until I read through the article. I then imagined myself as the entrepreneur, staring down into his coffee on the table, pondering the deal. I don't think I would've had the same visual response with a stock photo of a coffee cup. Not sure if that was your intent, but good job either way.
- g0atbutt 16y agoThanks for your kind words. My background is in design and I have a lot of fun working on those little graphics. All the best - Paul.
- akgerber 16y agoWhen I was younger all the grownups would offer advice like "Don't choose an immature name like Goat Butt to use online. No one will ever take you seriously." Remember that? I'm glad you're dedicating yourself to proving them wrong.
- hollerith 16y agoI spent about 5 seconds puzzling over why the graphic was there. I'm not sure what I think about that. On the minus, side that''s 5 seconds I will never get back. On the plus side, it built tension that I was probably able to use to read the article. My words apply only to people who are new to your site because of course after a reader has seen a few of these designs, he or she will not have the puzzlement reaction I had.
- jdludlow 16y agoYou can tell a lot about a person by the way that he treats waiters, waitresses, janitors, clerks, and other lower paying service jobs.
- reeses 16y agoNassim Taleb had a good quote that can be stretched to fit this. "Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them." It's more enlightened self-interest or utilitarianism than categorical imperative, but the gist is the same. Don't ignore the people you foolishly regard as unimportant. To quote from the other end of the spectrum,"The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances, we guard you while you sleep. Do not f--- with us."
- bigiain 16y agoOh come on, it's _not_ about having people "remember who slighted them". It's about not being a dick. Most people understand this just fine - you don't be a dick to the CEO or the Venture Capitalist because you're not a dick. You don't be a dick to the waitress or the janitor because you're not a dick. It's pretty easy. _Some_ people though, have to work hard at not being a dick to the investors 'cause there's something in it for them, and don't bother working hard at not being a dick to waitresses. The only reason they have any trouble with it is because they _are_ dicks. And as the article and a lot of these comments point out, other people _do_ notice.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mseebach 16y agoThat's really no excuse. Don't go on 2-3 hours of sleep a night if that means you can't treat people around you with respect. Or, at least, don't venture out among people who don't understand and appreciate the situation you're in.
- moondowner 16y agoThere was a saying, something in this style: "A person that is nice to you but not to the waitress, is not a good person."
- rdl 16y ago$40k for 15% post means he was screwing you to begin with, unless it was money which came with a technical cofounder attached, or someone with huge industry connections in a non-tech vertical product company, or happened in 1975. You should thank the investor for giving you another obvious sign to warn you away.
- TryThinking 16y agoPerhaps this advice transcends "investments" and "entrepreneurs" and even "waitresses."
- corin_ 16y agoThe more important point isn't that you look like a jerk, it's that you are a jerk.
- protomyth 16y agoYeah, it fits in with these "I am sorry you were offended at what I said" apologies.
- techiferous 16y agoIn that case, everyone is a jerk because if we're honest, we've all been rude at least once in our lives. :) In other words, I find it more helpful to call out specific behavior as inappropriate than to write off the whole person as a "jerk".
- corin_ 16y agoI can honestly say I've never been rude to a waiter, taxi driver, shop assistant... etc. And I certainly wouldn't claim to abide to a higher than average moral standard, I've been rude to my friends and to people I dislike. But not to my colleagues, not to strangers and not to people working indirectly for me (i.e. waiters etc.) It is quite possible that in the future I might be rude to a waiter, but that would be the exception, not the rule. So yes, it's possible that if you judge someone of a single incident you might have caught the one in a thousand occurrence, chances are against it, far more likely is that you're seeing their normal behaviour.
- techiferous 16y agoI'm not defending the behavior of being rude to the waitress nor saying that the entrepreneur had bad judgment in leaving the deal. My point is that it is not helpful to think of people as "jerks". I actually think it can promote rude behavior to label people "jerks" because people may justify to themselves that it's okay to be rude to a "jerk".
- corin_ 16y ago
- codeslush 16y agoThis story is often repeated in all types of business - it is a really useful tool when recruiting any kind of talent, or, for that matter, any kind of relationship. It's an absolutely remarkable character test! Useful when dating someone, interviewing someone or any number of other scenarios. It baffles me that people treat others in such a rude and public way - and moreover, it's stunning how frequently it occurs.
- icco 16y agoI generally live by the words "people suck." Then when you see such disgusting behavior as this, it is not surprising. Even better though, is when you meet truly kind people, it is a surprise and pleasure to work with them.
- rewind 16y agoI tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, and treat the assholes as outliers. It's too easy to assume the worst, but that's what a lot of people do these days. It's kind of sad.
- icco 16y agoI'll agree that saying "better safe than sorry" is probably the wrong way to view life, but taking what other people say with a grain of salt lets you question what people say more and come to your own decisions about life. Also, "people suck" includes yourself, so you can think about it as a way to think about what you are saying and doing and see if it is up to a level of quality that you are comfortable with.
- Stormbringer 16y agoAlong a similar line is one of my favourites: "if you lend a friend $20 and then never see him again, it was money well spent"
- newobj 16y agoIt also blows hiring. I was eating lunch with the CTO on my interview loop, and he was pitching me hard on the company. He treated the waitress (who gave us perfect service) so poorly that I instantly knew I would never want to work for this guy. Thinking back to every profoundly bad manager I've ever had (not bad in terms of 'ends' but bad in terms of 'means'), they all correlated with crapping on anyone they encountered in the service sector.
- random42 16y agoCare to explain what exactly was the CTO's treatment towards the waitress?
- Alex3917 16y agoWho are all these people who chronically mistreat the waitstaff? I've been to restaurants with hundreds of different people and I've never seen anyone act abusively towards the servers.
- callmeed 16y agoI take it you've never worked in a restaurant ... there are plenty of such people.
- noonespecial 16y agoDon't ever deliver Pizza. Its like COPS but with more yelling and less clothing.
- corin_ 16y agoPossibly it's a random local experience, possibly the bad attitude towards people delivering pizza is caused by bad service, or possibly visa versa, but: in my experience, pizza delivery people suck. Nearly all waiters/waitresses I've ever come across in restaurants have been fine or better, and the people in my local Chinese and Indian takeaways are really, really friendly. But Dominos and Pizza Hut drivers? Eugh, they're all (and by "all" I mean "all who work in the two shops near where I live) really grumpy and sometimes even rude. If I order a pizza, there's a 50% chance I'll have to actually concentrate on not yelling at them. I've twice felt the need to complain to the Dominos franchise owner about a driver, something I've never done in any other industry, not because I wanted to get back at the driver, but because the service was genuinely so poor that I felt they deserved to hear from me. For example, if someone orders a Pizza for delivery, the driver should try and deliver it, not just decide that ringing the bell is too much hassle and that it would be easier to leave the pizza outside the door getting cold. Probably just a coincidence, but an interesting one.
- PixelRobot 16y agoDon't tell everybody. It's a great way to identify people I want to avoid, and you ruin it by telling everybody.
- didip 16y agoDon't worry too much about it. Most of the "everybody" don't hang out on Hacker News.
- PixelRobot 16y agoIt's more of a "don't go telling people" thing than a "now that it's on Hacker News everybody will know" thing.
- kovar 16y agoI do not believe that anyone is saying that you should judge an individual based on one mistake, or one interaction with a waitress. However, the advice is to look at this incident in context, seek out trends (or the lack of trends), and add this to your perception of the individual.
- dotBen 16y agoYou can also do this with driving. A maxim I once heard was during a deal/hiring/etc process suggest going out for lunch and having the other person drive you both there. You can learn a lot about a person by the way they drive and they way they eat lunch (esp interacting with service people).
- techiferous 16y agoYou should be careful with judging people by how they drive. Cities have different levels of traffic congestion, traffic engineering and expectations. So the driving may say more about the city the driver is from than their personality.
- fleitz 16y agoDon't yell at anyone. Figure out the mistake and help them to correct it. If you're impressed by who someone is and that sort of thing then don't do it because you never know where they will be in 5 months, let alone 5 years. If you're just a decent person don't do it because it's disrespectful and you bring disrespect to yourself by treating others that way. It also shows you to be out of control with your emotions. One of the things that struck me most in the past few days was while waiting in line to get into Hipmunk party @ SXSW to see Alexis outside handing out bottles of water. Out of all the people I've met, ideas tossed around for startups, everything @ SXSW, Alexis had the most impact on me in terms of his dedication to helping people out.
- huhtenberg 16y agoAlso known as the "Swanson's (CEO) waiter test" - A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person. http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-04-14-ceos-waiter-rule_x.htm http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-04-1...
- hammock 16y ago> "We will take over the world together and I will make both of us very rich" That doesn't sound like a smooth talker, it sounds like a tacky sleazeball. Great story, though.
- masterzora 16y agoThe title of this bothers me. It suggests that you shouldn't yell at waitresses because it blows investments but, really you should not yell at waitresses and it also happens to blow investments. Don't put on a shoe for people you are doing business; be the person you would pretend to be.
- dkl 16y agoHow you treat a waitress or janitor says a lot about your personality. IMO, it's an asshole litmus test.