4 ms·

The Power of Nice

19 points by sgk284 18y ago

chris11 18y ago
The idea that cursing customer service representives is helpful is really wrong. In most cases they have done nothing to cause your problem. Sure, they might not be able to help. But if that is the case, just move on and try contacting someone else. Cursing them out will do nothing, and just guarantee that they probably won't do anything extra for you. You might as well be nice.
tptacek 18y ago
A slight spin on this concept: if you're in line watching someone get harassed by assholes, be extra nice when it's your turn. It's an opportunity. In Vegas at Black Hat a few years back, I watched 3 or 4 consecutive parties harass the person at the check-out counter. My turn, all I said was "wow, rough day huh?" I got upgraded to a suite.
- mncaudill 18y ago
  Exactly. Airline workers especially are quick to acknowledge a kind word. Their jobs are hell at times, and when someone offers some kindness, it is often returned in forms of vouchers and bump-ups.
  - chris11 18y ago
    "Their jobs are hell at times" Their jobs can be hell. The last time I flew, I got stuck in a airport both ways because of weather trouble. Unfortunately thousands of other people were stuck with me. The line to just talk to a flight attendant literally took about 11 hours to get through. I was on a break at the time, so the experience wasn't horrible for me personally, but it must have been a nightmare for the flight attendants. They had staff not show up for work. So basically overworked staff had to politely deal with thousands of angry and tired passengers.
- silentbicycle 18y ago
  Or put another way, if you're habitually rude to people, you're probably burning more bridges than you realize.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    That's the article's point. My point is, by all means, be habitually rude to people. Makes my life easier when I'm behind you in line. Thanks!
    - tomjen 18y ago
      You are not thinking this through. Ally yourself with four or five rude people and get them to stand in front of you in the line. Then you get some tickets for the next plane and split them with the rude people.
      - silentbicycle 18y ago
        Then you end up trapped on a plane, surrounded by rude people. Sweet!
- donw 18y ago
  I'm naturally friendly and patient with most customer service staff, probably thanks to a nearly two-year stint as a tech support guy at EarthLink. And sure enough, I get all kinds of special treatment because of it.
- mkn 18y ago
  An interesting point, but I think there are some other subtleties here that are going unnoticed. If we look at this from the standpoint of transactional analysis (and contextualize this narrative from the airline employee's point of view), this becomes less of a morality tale than a mini-drama about struggle for power. Two facts about airline employee's lives are relevant: 1) Their jobs place them at the low end of the socio-economic ladder, and 2) they are constantly exposed to and subservient to people with the financial means necessary to purchase air travel to distant locations. If this isn't a recipe for Nietzschean resentment, I don't know what is. Airline employees are prostrate before the abuses of the elite, and so subtly struggle to throw up obstacles to the elite's success, if only by causing irritation. This obstruction is best dealt out to the most egregious abusers, not only because it 'trains' the elite to respect the servers, but also because it gives the veneer of morality to the action. What if, for example, the story had been told from a different angle? Two airline counter employees each receive asshole customers. One of them responds in kind, and the other responds with kindness. The 'in kind' customer escalates, but the 'other cheek' customer settles down, apologizes, and--the icing on the cake--the 'other cheek' employee gets him booked on a choice flight or provides some other bonus? Who knows, maybe the 'other cheek' employee gets promoted to supervisor, with attendant pay increase! So, we can see that the 'nice deed' garners some benefit for the doer. This at least opens up the possibility that it is a crass manipulative move on the doers part. (Indeed, in the story in the article, the traveler not only received the earlier flight and the good will of the attendant, but also got to smugly refer to his friend as 'such an asshole' and got to gloat to his friend's face!) Also, though we see that there is a crass benefit to the doer of nice deeds, the story is presented as a morality tale, as if the nice deed was done for the sake of niceness, but with the attendant trifling success of having incidentally, almost by accident really, attained some material good, which, it just so happens, was in the control of the gatekeeper-recipient. As if the passenger regaling us with the tale would continue to be nice, for example, even if so doing would only serve to invariably further enrage the surly staff at every encounter. I'm not holding up unconditional niceness as an ideal, but I think it is important to recognize the full dynamic before reading too much into the situation. Nietzsche, for example, said that the Ubermensch could 'call a man his enemy without calling him evil.' In this instance, that would probably consist of recognizing that both passengers and airline employees feel powerless, and strive to master the situation with various tactics, not least of which are surliness, rudeness, and/or niceness. This is, fundamentally, a recognition of the amorality of the actors and their actions. In a lot of ways, this is a fundamental realization that successful customer service organizations must realize, even if they sublimate it. They simply have to remove the moral indignation portion of their interactions with customers and say, "By acting in a certain way, even if we lose out at the level of the interpersonal morality play, we receive the most benefit for ourselves. Further, the only thing that keeps this from being overly crass is that we realize our personal benefit by creating the best outcome for our customers. After all, every dollar we ever hope to earn is in someone else's pocket."
silentbicycle 18y ago
The way people treat others they don't have an immediate incentive to be nice to speaks volumes about them. If somebody is rude or manipulative to waitstaff on a date, for example, you know that's going to come out later in the relationship. When somebody is acting nice for purely selfish reasons, it tends to be quite inconsistent.
- donw 18y ago
  One of the best pieces of advice my mother gave me was 'date the waiter' -- because when you're on a date, the girl you're with is going to pay attention to how you treat the staff, because that's how you'll treat her.

19 points by sgk284 18y ago

The idea that cursing customer service representives is helpful is really wrong. In most cases they have done nothing to cause your problem. Sure, they might not be able to help. But if that is the case, just move on and try contacting someone else. Cursing them out will do nothing, and just guarantee that they probably won't do anything extra for you. You might as well be nice.

tptacek 18y ago

A slight spin on this concept: if you're in line watching someone get harassed by assholes, be extra nice when it's your turn. It's an opportunity. In Vegas at Black Hat a few years back, I watched 3 or 4 consecutive parties harass the person at the check-out counter. My turn, all I said was "wow, rough day huh?" I got upgraded to a suite.

mncaudill 18y ago
Exactly. Airline workers especially are quick to acknowledge a kind word. Their jobs are hell at times, and when someone offers some kindness, it is often returned in forms of vouchers and bump-ups.
- chris11 18y ago
  "Their jobs are hell at times" Their jobs can be hell. The last time I flew, I got stuck in a airport both ways because of weather trouble. Unfortunately thousands of other people were stuck with me. The line to just talk to a flight attendant literally took about 11 hours to get through. I was on a break at the time, so the experience wasn't horrible for me personally, but it must have been a nightmare for the flight attendants. They had staff not show up for work. So basically overworked staff had to politely deal with thousands of angry and tired passengers.
silentbicycle 18y ago
Or put another way, if you're habitually rude to people, you're probably burning more bridges than you realize.
- tptacek 18y ago
  That's the article's point. My point is, by all means, be habitually rude to people. Makes my life easier when I'm behind you in line. Thanks!
  - tomjen 18y ago
    You are not thinking this through. Ally yourself with four or five rude people and get them to stand in front of you in the line. Then you get some tickets for the next plane and split them with the rude people.
    - silentbicycle 18y ago
      Then you end up trapped on a plane, surrounded by rude people. Sweet!
donw 18y ago
I'm naturally friendly and patient with most customer service staff, probably thanks to a nearly two-year stint as a tech support guy at EarthLink. And sure enough, I get all kinds of special treatment because of it.
mkn 18y ago
An interesting point, but I think there are some other subtleties here that are going unnoticed. If we look at this from the standpoint of transactional analysis (and contextualize this narrative from the airline employee's point of view), this becomes less of a morality tale than a mini-drama about struggle for power. Two facts about airline employee's lives are relevant: 1) Their jobs place them at the low end of the socio-economic ladder, and 2) they are constantly exposed to and subservient to people with the financial means necessary to purchase air travel to distant locations. If this isn't a recipe for Nietzschean resentment, I don't know what is. Airline employees are prostrate before the abuses of the elite, and so subtly struggle to throw up obstacles to the elite's success, if only by causing irritation. This obstruction is best dealt out to the most egregious abusers, not only because it 'trains' the elite to respect the servers, but also because it gives the veneer of morality to the action. What if, for example, the story had been told from a different angle? Two airline counter employees each receive asshole customers. One of them responds in kind, and the other responds with kindness. The 'in kind' customer escalates, but the 'other cheek' customer settles down, apologizes, and--the icing on the cake--the 'other cheek' employee gets him booked on a choice flight or provides some other bonus? Who knows, maybe the 'other cheek' employee gets promoted to supervisor, with attendant pay increase! So, we can see that the 'nice deed' garners some benefit for the doer. This at least opens up the possibility that it is a crass manipulative move on the doers part. (Indeed, in the story in the article, the traveler not only received the earlier flight and the good will of the attendant, but also got to smugly refer to his friend as 'such an asshole' and got to gloat to his friend's face!) Also, though we see that there is a crass benefit to the doer of nice deeds, the story is presented as a morality tale, as if the nice deed was done for the sake of niceness, but with the attendant trifling success of having incidentally, almost by accident really, attained some material good, which, it just so happens, was in the control of the gatekeeper-recipient. As if the passenger regaling us with the tale would continue to be nice, for example, even if so doing would only serve to invariably further enrage the surly staff at every encounter. I'm not holding up unconditional niceness as an ideal, but I think it is important to recognize the full dynamic before reading too much into the situation. Nietzsche, for example, said that the Ubermensch could 'call a man his enemy without calling him evil.' In this instance, that would probably consist of recognizing that both passengers and airline employees feel powerless, and strive to master the situation with various tactics, not least of which are surliness, rudeness, and/or niceness. This is, fundamentally, a recognition of the amorality of the actors and their actions. In a lot of ways, this is a fundamental realization that successful customer service organizations must realize, even if they sublimate it. They simply have to remove the moral indignation portion of their interactions with customers and say, "By acting in a certain way, even if we lose out at the level of the interpersonal morality play, we receive the most benefit for ourselves. Further, the only thing that keeps this from being overly crass is that we realize our personal benefit by creating the best outcome for our customers. After all, every dollar we ever hope to earn is in someone else's pocket."

silentbicycle 18y ago

The way people treat others they don't have an immediate incentive to be nice to speaks volumes about them. If somebody is rude or manipulative to waitstaff on a date, for example, you know that's going to come out later in the relationship. When somebody is acting nice for purely selfish reasons, it tends to be quite inconsistent.

donw 18y ago
One of the best pieces of advice my mother gave me was 'date the waiter' -- because when you're on a date, the girl you're with is going to pay attention to how you treat the staff, because that's how you'll treat her.