9 ms·

I presume you said nothing to alert her to the issue, of course? Just got emotional about it and secretly resented the woman for having children…

unsupp0rted 3y ago
Of course I didn’t mention it. What would this have accomplished, other than upsetting her and establishing an adversarial call? I was calling in to get a task done. I got it done as quickly as possible and moved on. Next time if I get her again, I’ll request a different agent by name, who was professional and capable last time.
- redcobra762 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    I didn’t need to address the issue. Sometimes the best escalation is no escalation: get your task done and get on with your day. I don’t have a responsibility to their company to improve their service quality. To me it was a brief nuisance that turned into a shareable anecdote. If this is sufficiently annoying to other customers, they can address it however they choose to, or not… doesn’t affect me.
    - redcobra762 3y ago
      Except it absolutely affects you to the degree that you explicitly stated you would request another person to speak with, should it happen again.
  - dang 3y ago
    Hey, can you please not post in the flamewar style or cross into personal attack? You can make your substantive points without that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
    - redcobra762 3y ago
      I didn't post in the flamewar style or cross into (a) personal attack, but your shallow dismissal of my comment is mildly ironic...
      - dang 3y ago
        Well, these things are subject to interpretation, of course, but I don't think it's a stretch to call the following a personal attack, as it creates a pejorative image and applies it to the other person (and adds negative intensifiers like "of course", "just", "got emotional", "secretly resented"): "I presume you said nothing to alert her to the issue, of course? Just got emotional about it and secretly resented the woman for having children" Similarly for "I do find humorous the idea that you can't even fathom", which is both personal and aggressive, and written in internet snark style. Perhaps this won't be helpful as it sounds like I've already offended you, but I think most likely what's going on here is that most of us underestimate the provocation in our comments by a considerable amount (say 10x) and overestimate the provocation in the other's comments by a comparable amount (say another 10x), and that compounds to a 100x distortion in how we evaluate these things. They generally appear very different to a neutral reader.
        redcobra762 3y ago
        So how would you have conveyed the intent of, "I don't think you're being fair to this woman, nor do I think you're attempting to engage with the problem you've described in a productive way."? And no, I wouldn't say you've "offended me" per se, just that I find it disappointing you've chosen me, of the two people here, to reply to.
        dang 3y ago
        It would have been fine to post "I don't think you're being fair to this woman" and then add a description of what you think would be more fair to her. I would stay away from remarks like "nor do I think you're attempting to engage with the problem you've described in a productive way"—that's already a swipe, and already personal, and therefore on the wrong side of the line by HN standards. The GP comment wasn't great: it was ranty; the repetition of "lady" struck me as slightly distasteful; and the self-congratulatory reference to "unpopular opinion" is one of the worst internet clichés. However, I don't see that it broke the site guidelines; or at least not badly. If I were going to reply as a mod to every comment that strikes me as bad...well, that would be physically impossible, plus would generate an endless firestorm from readers objecting to my interpretations. I have to be a lot more cautious than that! In practice that means sticking to cases where the majority of readers would likely agree that the site guidelines were broken unambiguously. That's still guesswork, but less guessy than it sounds.

unsupp0rted 3y ago

Of course I didn’t mention it. What would this have accomplished, other than upsetting her and establishing an adversarial call? I was calling in to get a task done. I got it done as quickly as possible and moved on. Next time if I get her again, I’ll request a different agent by name, who was professional and capable last time.

redcobra762 3y ago
[flagged]
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  I didn’t need to address the issue. Sometimes the best escalation is no escalation: get your task done and get on with your day. I don’t have a responsibility to their company to improve their service quality. To me it was a brief nuisance that turned into a shareable anecdote. If this is sufficiently annoying to other customers, they can address it however they choose to, or not… doesn’t affect me.
  - redcobra762 3y ago
    Except it absolutely affects you to the degree that you explicitly stated you would request another person to speak with, should it happen again.
- dang 3y ago
  Hey, can you please not post in the flamewar style or cross into personal attack? You can make your substantive points without that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - redcobra762 3y ago
    I didn't post in the flamewar style or cross into (a) personal attack, but your shallow dismissal of my comment is mildly ironic...
    - dang 3y ago
      Well, these things are subject to interpretation, of course, but I don't think it's a stretch to call the following a personal attack, as it creates a pejorative image and applies it to the other person (and adds negative intensifiers like "of course", "just", "got emotional", "secretly resented"): "I presume you said nothing to alert her to the issue, of course? Just got emotional about it and secretly resented the woman for having children" Similarly for "I do find humorous the idea that you can't even fathom", which is both personal and aggressive, and written in internet snark style. Perhaps this won't be helpful as it sounds like I've already offended you, but I think most likely what's going on here is that most of us underestimate the provocation in our comments by a considerable amount (say 10x) and overestimate the provocation in the other's comments by a comparable amount (say another 10x), and that compounds to a 100x distortion in how we evaluate these things. They generally appear very different to a neutral reader.
      - redcobra762 3y ago
        So how would you have conveyed the intent of, "I don't think you're being fair to this woman, nor do I think you're attempting to engage with the problem you've described in a productive way."? And no, I wouldn't say you've "offended me" per se, just that I find it disappointing you've chosen me, of the two people here, to reply to.
        dang 3y ago
        It would have been fine to post "I don't think you're being fair to this woman" and then add a description of what you think would be more fair to her. I would stay away from remarks like "nor do I think you're attempting to engage with the problem you've described in a productive way"—that's already a swipe, and already personal, and therefore on the wrong side of the line by HN standards. The GP comment wasn't great: it was ranty; the repetition of "lady" struck me as slightly distasteful; and the self-congratulatory reference to "unpopular opinion" is one of the worst internet clichés. However, I don't see that it broke the site guidelines; or at least not badly. If I were going to reply as a mod to every comment that strikes me as bad...well, that would be physically impossible, plus would generate an endless firestorm from readers objecting to my interpretations. I have to be a lot more cautious than that! In practice that means sticking to cases where the majority of readers would likely agree that the site guidelines were broken unambiguously. That's still guesswork, but less guessy than it sounds.