Profitable Politeness
Have you ever been in a situation where someone screwed up your account and you had to call customer service and tell them off? What about someone asking you to do something above and/or beyond your responsibility and you had to tell them to check your job description? Before you told off the customer service rep or let that person know exactly what your job is, id you consider the consequences?
I think I might have said this in previous entries, and I will in future ones – one of the two best pieces of advice I ever got was ‘choose your battles.’ Don’t waste time and energy fighting battles you don’t have the chance to win or that aren’t worth the cost it takes to win. After a few recent observations, I have some more to add to that. When you chose the wrong battles, you can end up waging war against innocents or sometimes even yourself.
A woman walked into my office yesterday and was upset because a letter she had requested was not completed to her satisfaction. The letter she did receive contained the information we normally give out – for what she wanted, she was actually in the wrong place. Still, someone wanted to make her life easier and he stepped up, prepared to bend the rules a bit to help her. When he tried to talk to her to get more information on the situation, she responded rudely and snatched a sheet of paper from his hand. He changed his mind about helping her and told her she needed to call the person that originally gave her the letter she wasn’t happy with and he walked away. That woman never knew how close she came to getting what she needed. She walked out of the office unaware that she had just crippled herself by fighting a battle that wasn’t even there to be fought. Now she’s going to have to make a bunch of phonecalls and make another trip to the office.
It seems that in an overwhelming number of situations like this, the cause of the problem is that people do not see other people as people. That woman came into this office yesterday seeing an organization. She did not see a man who was treating her politely and respectfully and who was trying to help her. She saw an extension of the institution that had in her opinion messed up, so she took out her anger on the individual. Her taking that attitude was not only unnecessary and unpleasant, it was detrimental to her. It’s the same sort of thing when someone asks you to go a bit beyond your job description as a favor and you recite the rules to them. Even if you’re at work, every interaction does not need to be on a business level. Do a favor simply because you’re spending a chunk of every day around that person and it will help create a pleasant atmosphere for you to work in.
Some might say that some people need drama in their lives to survive. I don’t know if those people really exist, but if they do, I’m sure they are not the majority. Those of us who like straightforward , easy lives need to do our best to keep our lives that way. Right now I’m sidestepping the whole moral question of whether its fair to treat a person a certain way because of how someone else in his organization acted and I’m ignoring the idea of doing favors just to be nice just for the sake of being nice. There are immediate and practical reasons to be nice. Be pragmatic. There is a potential bridge between you and every human being you will ever come into contact with. Don’t line a bridge with dynamite and light it on fire before you even have the chance to see how sturdy it is. How you treat people is important – it often has very significant ramifications. Whether it be the customer service representative you want to yell at, some random guy standing next to you, or your co-worker. That random guy may find himself in a position to help you or do you a favor one day and it would really suck for you if he didn’t do it because you were rude to him without provocation at some point in the past. That co-worker could have the opportunity to cover for you if you slip up one day and it would be a tragedy if he didn’t because he didn’t like your attitude. That customer service representative…well, I told you what happened with the girl. Every one can’t be your friend, but by being courteous to the people around you and treating them as individuals, you will ensure that they are not all your enemies.
