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Saying No
- dan_q 2mo ago[dead]
- mungoman2 2mo agoWell, was the contract terminated? Saying no will sometimes have consequences, and the counterpart is sometimes unreasonable.
- hyperhello 2mo agoSaying No is a skill you have to jump in and develop to get good enough at it to be responsible for others. It’s okay to say No for yourself, but keep in mind the other party may have a lot of practice saying No themselves.
- tpoacher 2mo agoThat quote reminds me a bit of the Non-violent Communication book.
- sandeepkd 2mo agoIts never a simple thing to say no, it does comes down the personality for sure, however what matters is 1. Who are you saying NO to - Ideally what you are saying NO to should have mattered more however in real world incentives and repercussions matter a lot 2. How are you saying NO - Even if one saying a direct NO the tone matters, other times there are ways where you can add precursor conditions (which make it a automatic NO) or you put it on the backlog way too far down that it never gets a real chance to be acted upon. Putting it on the backlog is the corporate style of saying no without saying NO. Smart people just avoid getting into backlog and just truncate it if its been in the backlog for way too long.
- thor-rodrigues 2mo agoSo at the beginning of the story you started with a rented space you and others practice yoga, and the end result is that you lost your practice room, without gaining anything else other then… slightly more confidence? Is there supposed to be a teaching in here?
- crab_galaxy 2mo agoAlso this doesn’t even feel the same “no and negotiate” he’s advocating for? This is straight up “No.” Territory. He rents the dang space it’s not anyone else’s decision.
- nkrisc 2mo agoTo not be a pushover. The alternative is also not getting what they want: a cold yoga space. So this is probably the better outcome.
- j_maffe 2mo agoBut that seems to have little to do with the quote... I'm confused.
- Aurornis 2mo ago> The alternative is also not getting what they want: a cold yoga space. The alternative was using the phone call with the manager to calmly explain the situation and try to negotiate. The blog kept talking about using "no" as a starting point for negotiating, then when the negotiation opportunity peaked he refused to listen to the other person and gloated about it. The second half of the book's advice (the negotiate part) flew right over his head. He was too stuck on the "No" part.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoIt seems to me that the person who wasn't listening was the manager who ignored the reasonable reasons for not wanting a cold room and made up some bullshit about compressors.
- shdwslrkr 2mo ago[dead]
- jasim 2mo agoI think this is somewhere in the middle east - Dubai likely - and it is hot there. It is quite predictable that there would be mass opposition with institutional support against turning off air conditioning in a common space, despite having a couple of hours of exclusive rental. That said, it is a good reminder that we have a choice in what we are willing to accept, and can fall back on a BATNA, even if it is not the most ideal outcome.
- msteffen 2mo ago> I think this is somewhere in the middle east - Dubai likely What led you to this conclusion?
- eknkc 2mo agoI am sorry but what was the point of this story?
- b3lvedere 2mo agoI have no freaking clue. It’s that person from Dubai again with weird luxury problems.
- 5w6u56uw 2mo agoLOL at doing yoga in Dubai. I hope it's for health and not spiritual reasons because there's no curing the spiritual sickness of living in that shithole.
- NSUserDefaults 2mo agoSome ACs are on-off only, with no other setting. Like some people, apparently.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoAll ACs are like this. The compressor is either running or it isn't.
- NSUserDefaults 2mo agoNot even a thermostat to on-off automatically and reach a preset temperature?
- throwrioawfo 2mo agoSelf-aggrandisement
- rishikeshs 2mo agoAre you based in UAE by any chance?
- chromakode 2mo agoSaying no without attempting to negotiate first also comes off as childish, and affects the outcome of future negotiations because it demonstrates an unwillingness to compromise.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- skeeter2020 2mo agoThis post struck me as overly simplistic; not sure if that was intentional for illustrative purposes, or the classic "I read 50 pages of this management book last night and now will apply it to everything" approach. The answer is almost always the third way, where you both get pretty much all of the essence of what you're after, but not through oppositional simple paths. You don't negotiate WHAT you get, but HOW you get there. The post here is very one-sided and confrontational.
- engineer_22 2mo agoNo is a perfectly reasonable starting point for a negotiation.
- adamm255 2mo agoRight?? Not sure how you start a negotiation without the first move being a no.
- nicbou 2mo agoSometimes "no" is a full answer. Compromise is not owed if the demands seem unreasonable. If you ask a question and can't accept no for an answer, you were not really asking.
- ctoth 2mo agoThis person learned half the framework, then refused to listen when the adult on the other side of the phone explained their reasons for having to have the A/C on, then wants ... what? for demonstrating their misunderstanding? > He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand. > two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want ... Which they would be able to do if you actually listened to the guy instead of dismissing him as someone you didn't understand?
- SoftTalker 2mo agoTurning an AC unit off for a couple of hours has absolutely no negative consequences to the unit itself. The stuff about compressors was bullshit that the manager hoped would not be challenged.
- 5w6u56uw 2mo agoSo the manager just wanted to leave the AC on all night for no reason? That makes no sense.
- c22 2mo agoWe don't really know what the concern was, because our sole narrator wasn't paying attention when it was voiced. However, if the "solution" was to keep one AC unit off while running the other one I could see there being a concern overtaxing the single running unit.
- engineer_22 2mo agoRemember that this is an abbreviated version of real events. It appears the differences were irreconcilable, which is OK, ending this relationship creates room for new opportunities.
- vasco 2mo agoWell you got told No, did it anyway and lost the room. Not sure you understood the negotiation part.
- dalemhurley 2mo agoHollow victory. The landlord was probably trying to squeeze some small margin by leasing unoccupied hours. The loss of occupancy is probably a small rounding error. The yoga group now without a space. A major loss for them.
- vasco 2mo agoI wonder what you think I wrote
- jjtheblunt 2mo ago(off topic, but cool domain name)
- Ekaros 2mo agoI did not really get the point. Apart that you should terminate dealings with unreasonable people. Like the other party did here. Just saying no to unreasonable people like the writer is best option. Even if you then need to negotiate for refund.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- madrox 2mo agoThis is poorly written with an unclear outcome. This starts as talking about how to make 1:1s more productive. It ends with, I must presume though it is unclear, losing a lease with no backup. This is not more productive. Compromise is about figuring out how to give everybody what they want while letting go of how it happens. Turning on half the ACs is a great compromise. Whatever happened at the end is not. To be generous to the author though, I can see how standing up for yourself in this way would feel revolutionary to someone who has never pushed back in their life. Just know this is the first step on a much longer journey. The next step is figuring out what the compromise would have been with the authority figure on the phone.
- flatline 2mo agoThe author kept acting in good faith till the other party stopped doing so, which I took as the actual resolution to this story. Maybe when you stop treating people like rational adults when they have demonstrated otherwise is where you find your real “no.” It’s a hard lesson I’ve learned many times, and it sometimes entails walking away from something to preserve your own sanity/integrity.
- cgyvbunji 2mo agoI read it as they already had the compromise in place, since he said they agreed the AC closest to him would be off and the AC farthest from him would remain on, and the other party eventually demanded the close AC be on as well. In this scenario, where a compromise was reached and then breached by the other party, how exactly would you arrive at a "compromise"?
- Chris2048 2mo agoThe first party are described as "office people", I'm not sure it's the same party as the 2nd.
- msteffen 2mo agoI think the keys here are 1. It’s not clear who wrote the note, and they didn’t leave contact info or any opening to a negotiation. If the note had said “this AC must stay on at all times, please call 111-222-3333 with any questions - building engineer” that would’ve completely reversed the morality of story for me. But the note asserts authority by making this non-negotiable demand (which is the part that seems patronizing to me—I agree with TFA here) and doesn’t justify that authority at all, no “I’m the owner” or anything. 2. The first step of finding a compromise is knowing what everybody wants. The author of TFA didn’t seem to do that in the story, and his apparent lack of curiosity about the compressor does not reflect well, I agree, but neither does a threat from whoever wrote the note. My wild guess here is that the person who wrote the note worked in maintenance and was unhappy about the building warming and cooling and wanted a stable temperature. The resolution may well be that the author has to find a new place to do yoga, but if he’s not interested in air-conditioned yoga, and the building’s authorities aren’t interested in tenants who want the AC off, that outcome might have been inevitable anyway.
- pflenker 2mo agoIt feels to me as if the author got it backwards - in turning the AC back on, they didn’t „say no“ - the person who put up the note has „said no“ in the first place (to the practice of turning the ACs off) and the author was ignoring this clearly visible outlined boundary that other person has drawn. Don’t get me wrong, the note itself wasn’t great either, but ignoring it wasn’t some great sign of „saying no“ - it was needlessly escalating a conflict instead of trying to resolve it.
- Muskwalker 2mo ago100%, the author believes they learned the lesson, but failed to recognize what it looks like when a person on the other side initiates this process. It's amazing the dissonance here: > They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference. I didn't throw these wise words back at him, but that's what was going through my head. And it emboldened me further. I simply told him the room is unusable for yoga with the AC on and we've paid rent for the room. They were emboldened to discard even mentioning negotiation and stood their ground instead. That might be fine if the lesson you're trying to illustrate is one about firm boundaries but the advice they're holding up here was very much the opposite.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- serf 2mo agoI felt zero sympathy after the author decided to ignore any possible valid reasoning under the cemented position of 'well I pay rent' -- that's not maturity. Further more, my rule: the more someone tells you how mature their position is and how child like you're being the more the odds increase that the only problem is that your opponent doesn't have a mirror or an ounce of introspection.
- kstrauser 2mo agoI agree, especially mentioning the compressor as being some ignore-worthy issue. I can imagine the owner saying something like “this is a desert and that unit’s designed to be powered on continuously, and when you flat-out turn the thing off it breaks the hardware. Stop turning it off.” And on that note, has no one involved heard of a thermostat?
- onli 2mo agoHe described he pressed a button to turn it off. Here isn't a single AC unit out there that breaks from that, I'll claim hat confidently until proven otherwise.
- Kenji 2mo ago[dead]
- xg15 2mo ago> He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand. wouldn't part of an "adult-to-adult conversation" also be to try and listen to the other, if nothing else than to understand their arguments? > After some filler words, he said he will talk to the owner terminating the contract and giving a refund. I said great and hung up. If that's what OP understands as "negotiating the difference" then ok, I guess...
- Aurornis 2mo agoI thought this article was supposed to be about negotiating, but this person doesn't want to listen to or negotiate with anyone. The closest they came to negotiation was when they were doing yoga alone in one room and "decided" to allow a dozen other people in a different room to turn their A/C on. > On these days, I've told them to turn the AC off until we're done. One day, I was the only one practicing and I had to tell this to a dozen people outside the room. I will never forget the bugged looks I got back. Eventually their leader spoke up and we decided that they can turn on the AC further away from the room. Then when the other tenants finally get sick of this, they get the owner on the phone. This is the negotiating opportunity. Instead, this person gloats about not listening: > The man on the other end introduced himself as some authority figure and told me to turn the AC back on. He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand. But then he asked me in an accusing tone, why I turned it off despite the note saying not to. Peter Block would find this question childish. After all, two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want. They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference. I think they forgot to consider that the other person can also say "no". This is the climax of the negotiation opportunity, and he uses it to tell off the manager: > After some filler words, he said he will talk to the owner terminating the contract and giving a refund. I said great and hung up. The intense worship for Peter Block throughout the post is a strange contrast to the way they fail to implement any part of the advice other than the "No" part. There was no negotiation here. Just a strange pyrrhic victory.
- hahahaa 2mo agoYes the whole thing seems literally childish (like a 6 year old perhaps) and they could have grabbed a coffee and have both sides explain their point of view and come up with a solution. And the solution space here is huge. Upvote for "pyrrhic victory" that is perfectly what this is.
- dalemhurley 2mo agoIt is a strange post. He missed the opportunity to work with the other side to find a mutually beneficial solution. Now they have no studio and the other side have their aircon exactly how they like it. This should be a lesson in cutting off your nose despite your face.
- SV_BubbleTime 2mo agoOh. Mixed feelings on this. Good quote, and etc. but there is something about this I can’t resonate with. The… “ask permission”ness of it all.
- montebicyclelo 2mo agoApparently, the French typically start with "no" because it leaves them room to say "yes" later, which is harder to go back on. > “Answering ‘non’ gives you the option to say ‘oui’ [yes] later; [it’s] the opposite when you say ‘oui’, you can no longer say ‘non’! https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20190804-why-the-french-love-to-say-no https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20190804-why-the-french...
- hahahaa 2mo agoDeclaring the probability works too and is maybe more cross-culture compatible (very important!) as some people may take no as no. E.g. "I am keen, and will likely do that I just need a day to think/research/decide".
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoI'd say accepting "No" as an answer, is more important. If someone says "No" to me, and it's something that I really, really want, then negotiations can begin. If the other party is impervious to compromise, then it's incumbent upon me to either "live with it," or "flee the scene" (or call Vinnie and Bugsy, to do some negotiating for me). My experience -especially these days- is that people see "No" as either a personal affront, or to be discounted and ignored, because it isn't what they want to hear. "No." is a complete sentence. I don't owe anyone an explanation (unless we start negotiating). I need to accept that, from others.
- oceanplexian 2mo ago> There are two ACs on the second floor which we keep turned off because the cool air prevents natural sweating and muscles from loosening. Why do so many supposedly educated people from developed countries have completely pseudoscientific beliefs about A/C? It’s so bizarre and frankly, embarrassing to even read. You will sweat exactly the same as you would at 30% RH at 72 degrees on a cool day outdoors. There’s nothing mystical about the air conditioner at work here.
- abanana 2mo agoWhat on earth have you misread here? He's saying they want to be in a warm room (so they'll work up a sweat), not in a cool room (so they won't). What are these pseudoscientific and mystical beliefs you've read before and apparently mistakenly applied to this post (because they sound interesting, if only in a "WTF?" kind of way)? I can't make head or tail of what you think his meaning is, and given the downvotes, it seems others can't either.
- Ekaros 2mo agoIf that is the problem. Why not do compromise and wear more cloths? Surely there is something that would be insulating enough...
- dalemhurley 2mo agoThis post belongs on LinkedIn
- throwrioawfo 2mo agoEven LinkedIn slop isn't as bad as this
- analog31 2mo ago>>> Peter Block's quote is a great reminder that between two adults, saying 'No' is always an option and not something to feel weird or anxious about. So next time you're being ask to do something, pause, and consider saying 'No' more than you normally would. The other party should expect this. And you both should be prepared to negotiate. Not negotiating is also an option, and not something to feel weird or anxious about. Worst case scenario. Against my best instincts, I opened my door to a salesman. He wanted to sell me new Internet service. I said No. He asked why. I thanked him for his time and closed the door. He's a trained hustler, and I'm a terrible negotiator. Nothing good would ever come of negotiating with him. I can make a perfectly good estimate of the probability of us finding a mutually acceptable middle ground... zero. People will constantly ask you for things that are not in your best interest at all. They're betting on a chance that you will feel obligated to give them something. They can learn that sometimes people will say No without giving a satisfactory reason. They have probably already learned it.
- Insimwytim 2mo agoI actually liked the story, despite some valid negative comments here. "AC on" crowd usually have no consideration for anyone and rarely understands that while air flow matters, the temperature doesn't have to be freezing. "Don't do it" note have as much validity as "Nah, I will" reaction. The fact that conversation happened is a win, and it's fine, that the problem wasn't solved in the best possible way, it isn't lingering anymore, so that's a better outcome that nothing.
- 5w6u56uw 2mo agoBraindead comment, the building owner needed the AC on for some reason which does not need to be specified to the obnoxious tenant.
- Insimwytim 2mo agoA throwaway just for this thread, wow!
- oh_my_goodness 2mo agoFind a temperature that both sides can accept. Also, the dozen other people affected by the air conditioning? Do they pay rent too? This feels like a story from someone who just crossed the threshold into adulthood and thinks that makes him the "dad" now.
- throwrioawfo 2mo agoSounds like you're being highly unreasonable and childish to me
- dalemhurley 2mo agoI remember an executive who was like this person. They had a private office and it was a little cold so they brought in a space heater. That sent the thermostat off, suddenly the whole office became ice cold. He would not listen to anyone’s else pleas because his comfort was more important. People from building maintenance would put up signs and he would rip them down. Some people’s idea of negotiating is just forcing peoples hand until they have no choice but to terminate the relationship. We were also kicked out of the building.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- GMoromisato 2mo agoThe hard part about being a human being is that every bit of advice is good in some contexts but not in others. Sometimes you're right to set boundaries and say 'no'. Other times, you should negotiate and compromise. I'm very skeptical of people who pick One Simple Trick to solve all problems.
- huebnerob 2mo agoThis person sounds insufferable. I mean, there’s lack of consideration for your fellow humans, and then there’s openly admitting that you “don’t care to understand” the reasons for why anyone feels differently from you. Let’s say no to this kind of mentality.
- nchmy 2mo agoI noped out of this article after a couple paragraphs
- nkzednan 2mo agoIn terms of saying no - the title of this piece tho a bit tangential to the content, I’d recommend the book Set Boundaries Find Peace https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55782639-set-boundaries-find-peace https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55782639-set-boundaries-... Also at this one event I’ve been to, there are some exercises to get people more comfortable saying no. You pair up, one person out of nowhere says no and the other person verbally celebrates the no. Then switch. There’s a guideline that if you’re a maybe say no and then take the time to reflect on why a maybe and then if realize actually a yes then can say yes and change your mind.