5 ms·

It gets worse. "Note: a second co-founder did email me for the first time around 2am yesterday, suggesting we meet for coffee as he 'would enjoy meeting' me. H

It gets worse. "Note: a second co-founder did email me for the first time around 2am yesterday, suggesting we meet for coffee as he 'would enjoy meeting' me. He made no inquiry into my current emotional state, my safety or my well being." Speechless. The lack of compassion for another human being here is staggering. Utterly oblivious — or indifferent. How does this happen to people?

jrockway 15y ago
Writing well is extremely hard. It could be that the "second co-founder" is bad at writing rather than oblivious or indifferent. He did want to meet her in person, perhaps to lend assistance, after all. If he was oblivious, this is probably not the action he would have taken.
- danilocampos 15y ago
  > Writing well is extremely hard. Please. Writing like Michael Chabon or Aaron Sorkin is hard. Having some basic compassion in how you interact with people is not. This email didn't need to win any awards — it just needed to have some minimum level of sensitivity. As I said in a cousin: "he 'would enjoy meeting' me" I don't think she really gives a damn in her current state what this guy would "enjoy" doing, is really the point here.
  - zachinglis 15y ago
    I have to agree with you. If someone falls over in the street, you probably ask if they're okay. If someone worse happens to them because your website failed to make someone safe, then you don't tell them you'd "enjoy meeting" them.
  - nmcfarl 15y ago
    I completely agree with your last sentence. However, I at least, find writing about emotional matters to be extremely difficult. When I sit down with a goal of saying something nice, to show some compassion, to show what I'm actually feeling - what I usually end up doing is twisting the knife. So in general I write less, and see the people face to face ASAP. Any other way is just harder for us both. I could have easily made this mistake.
Confusion 15y ago
Well, isn't that what he would probably talk about over coffee? We don't know how the conversation went. He may have said something like: We're very sorry about what's happened to you and seek to resolve it. Let's have coffee as soon as possible to see what we have to do to resolve the situation for you. Would that justify the criticism that he should have asked about how she was at that moment, when it would seem from the conversation that there was every intention to do so only moments later?
- danilocampos 15y ago
  "he 'would enjoy meeting' me" I don't think she really gives a damn in her current state what this guy would "enjoy" doing, is really the point here.
  - Confusion 15y ago
    Apart from jrockway's explanation: it may also be the way she currently construes and represents the email and is not a literal quote. Given 'her current state', you can't really trust her to be an honest judge of peoples' intentions. Nor should you fault her for that, but that doesn't mean her statements can be taken at face value.
    - danilocampos 15y ago
      EJ has demonstrated a keen grasp of English language, punctuation and rhetoric. I think regardless of her state communication is clearly her strong suit. What I'm saying is that I'd bet good money she knows what quotation marks mean.
      - Confusion 15y ago
        True, but the rest of the point remains: you don't know the rest of the message and how well she's presenting it. That particular quoted phrase may have annoyed her so much, that it doesn't really matter anymore what the rest of the email said. Even though an objective outsider would say the email was otherwise decent and acceptable. What I'm saying, and why I'm responding, is that I'm seeing classic lynch mob behavior: people are out with their pitchforks, making all kinds of sweepings statements about what is happening, based on very little actual information. You are making rather bold assertions about someone based on only that quote. Doesn't that strike you as perhaps a bit rash?
cookiecaper 15y ago
Now this part I think is overdramatic. I agree with jrockway. Criticizing a person for stating he would "enjoy meeting" a person is more than a bit pedantic imo. I'm sorry if she "doesn't care" about what anyone else may "enjoy", but seriously, I don't think it indicates any lack of sympathy. It's not like EJ is bleeding all over her keyboard while people nonchalantly schedule appointments later in the week or something, the crime is over now and it's a reasonable way to request a meeting. What do you want him to say? Really a silly thing to make a fuss over, and fussing over trivial matters just weakens an otherwise strong case.
- danso 15y ago
  Not disagreeing with you, but just wanted to point out: this is why there are such things as trained spokespeople and customer service reps. I know these jobs aren't looked upon with much respect by those of us in the engineering and development community who would rather say things directly to the customer...but here, an innocent attempt to cut through the redtape and get to the bottom of things may have been misinterpreted by the customer to look much worse than it was... I can totally see how the co-founder had the best of intentions and in his mind, was thinking "She'll be grateful to see me cutting through the layers of BS and giving her a straightforward invitation to meetup". Unfortunately, she saw the terse message and interpreted it in the worst light possible...and then reposted it to the world, with her interpretation. When my car got wrecked by someone else's poor driving, I dreaded making the call to my insurance company to deal with it, even though all I had to do was report it to get my reimbursement. The very first thing the customer rep said to me after I said why I was calling was, "Are you OK? How are you doing?" I was totally fine, and though this is most likely a script that they teach to anyone qualified to answer the phones...even if I were angry, it'd be difficult for me to rip on the customer rep (at that particular point). In the airbnb case, if the co-founder had taken the five seconds to go through the motions of expressing the empathy that he felt, at the very least, this disgruntled customer couldn't claim on her blog that he had expressed no empathy for her situation and just wanted to get to deal making...which was probably quite the opposite of how he felt. But yeah...it is a trivial bit in the big picture. It's a shame it could taint the discussion between her and airbnb regardless.
kevinpet 15y ago
What's the problem? Co-founder wants to meet with person who was harmed by using his company's service? Or the fact that he didn't phrase his request for a meeting appropriately? You must have a lot of trouble walking down the street if you find such trivial things staggering.

jrockway 15y ago

Writing well is extremely hard. It could be that the "second co-founder" is bad at writing rather than oblivious or indifferent. He did want to meet her in person, perhaps to lend assistance, after all. If he was oblivious, this is probably not the action he would have taken.

danilocampos 15y ago
> Writing well is extremely hard. Please. Writing like Michael Chabon or Aaron Sorkin is hard. Having some basic compassion in how you interact with people is not. This email didn't need to win any awards — it just needed to have some minimum level of sensitivity. As I said in a cousin: "he 'would enjoy meeting' me" I don't think she really gives a damn in her current state what this guy would "enjoy" doing, is really the point here.
- zachinglis 15y ago
  I have to agree with you. If someone falls over in the street, you probably ask if they're okay. If someone worse happens to them because your website failed to make someone safe, then you don't tell them you'd "enjoy meeting" them.
- nmcfarl 15y ago
  I completely agree with your last sentence. However, I at least, find writing about emotional matters to be extremely difficult. When I sit down with a goal of saying something nice, to show some compassion, to show what I'm actually feeling - what I usually end up doing is twisting the knife. So in general I write less, and see the people face to face ASAP. Any other way is just harder for us both. I could have easily made this mistake.

Confusion 15y ago

Well, isn't that what he would probably talk about over coffee? We don't know how the conversation went. He may have said something like: We're very sorry about what's happened to you and seek to resolve it. Let's have coffee as soon as possible to see what we have to do to resolve the situation for you. Would that justify the criticism that he should have asked about how she was at that moment, when it would seem from the conversation that there was every intention to do so only moments later?

danilocampos 15y ago
"he 'would enjoy meeting' me" I don't think she really gives a damn in her current state what this guy would "enjoy" doing, is really the point here.
- Confusion 15y ago
  Apart from jrockway's explanation: it may also be the way she currently construes and represents the email and is not a literal quote. Given 'her current state', you can't really trust her to be an honest judge of peoples' intentions. Nor should you fault her for that, but that doesn't mean her statements can be taken at face value.
  - danilocampos 15y ago
    EJ has demonstrated a keen grasp of English language, punctuation and rhetoric. I think regardless of her state communication is clearly her strong suit. What I'm saying is that I'd bet good money she knows what quotation marks mean.
    - Confusion 15y ago
      True, but the rest of the point remains: you don't know the rest of the message and how well she's presenting it. That particular quoted phrase may have annoyed her so much, that it doesn't really matter anymore what the rest of the email said. Even though an objective outsider would say the email was otherwise decent and acceptable. What I'm saying, and why I'm responding, is that I'm seeing classic lynch mob behavior: people are out with their pitchforks, making all kinds of sweepings statements about what is happening, based on very little actual information. You are making rather bold assertions about someone based on only that quote. Doesn't that strike you as perhaps a bit rash?

cookiecaper 15y ago

Now this part I think is overdramatic. I agree with jrockway. Criticizing a person for stating he would "enjoy meeting" a person is more than a bit pedantic imo. I'm sorry if she "doesn't care" about what anyone else may "enjoy", but seriously, I don't think it indicates any lack of sympathy. It's not like EJ is bleeding all over her keyboard while people nonchalantly schedule appointments later in the week or something, the crime is over now and it's a reasonable way to request a meeting. What do you want him to say? Really a silly thing to make a fuss over, and fussing over trivial matters just weakens an otherwise strong case.

danso 15y ago
Not disagreeing with you, but just wanted to point out: this is why there are such things as trained spokespeople and customer service reps. I know these jobs aren't looked upon with much respect by those of us in the engineering and development community who would rather say things directly to the customer...but here, an innocent attempt to cut through the redtape and get to the bottom of things may have been misinterpreted by the customer to look much worse than it was... I can totally see how the co-founder had the best of intentions and in his mind, was thinking "She'll be grateful to see me cutting through the layers of BS and giving her a straightforward invitation to meetup". Unfortunately, she saw the terse message and interpreted it in the worst light possible...and then reposted it to the world, with her interpretation. When my car got wrecked by someone else's poor driving, I dreaded making the call to my insurance company to deal with it, even though all I had to do was report it to get my reimbursement. The very first thing the customer rep said to me after I said why I was calling was, "Are you OK? How are you doing?" I was totally fine, and though this is most likely a script that they teach to anyone qualified to answer the phones...even if I were angry, it'd be difficult for me to rip on the customer rep (at that particular point). In the airbnb case, if the co-founder had taken the five seconds to go through the motions of expressing the empathy that he felt, at the very least, this disgruntled customer couldn't claim on her blog that he had expressed no empathy for her situation and just wanted to get to deal making...which was probably quite the opposite of how he felt. But yeah...it is a trivial bit in the big picture. It's a shame it could taint the discussion between her and airbnb regardless.

kevinpet 15y ago

What's the problem? Co-founder wants to meet with person who was harmed by using his company's service? Or the fact that he didn't phrase his request for a meeting appropriately? You must have a lot of trouble walking down the street if you find such trivial things staggering.