It pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered (2016) | Hacker News Reader

It pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered (2016)

bbc.com

86 pointsHnaomyiph109 comments

This whole fake positivity thing is very US centric I feel. I remember that Walmart tried to expand here to Germany and failed, and one of the reasons I heard was that the culture of constantly smiling cashiers actually freaked customers out, and employees were stressed by 'company chants' in the morning, which I didn't even knew existed.

Many of the things mentioned in the article I don't find at all surprising. When in challenging or sad situations it's only reasonable to be grumpy, or pessimistic or what have you. Negative emotions or feelings are part of our natural range and appropriate depending on the cirumstances. Forced positivy to me always has something ghoulish, Truman-show like.

One particular thing that I've noticed about very optimistic people is that they (not always) but sometimes tend to have an overly inflated sense of agency even in situations where they are objectively not in control. When something goes wrong in these cases people like that tend to blame themselves more than appropriate. I think this can be the source of a lot of frustration.

I understand how forced positivity might seem fake, but studies have shown that forcing a smile or forcing a group activity, can actually improve people's moods (both the giver and the recipient).

It is a cultural shift though that seems alien initially, but then you really get used to it, and it really does make people feel better when they encounter it literally at every store. Positivity also disarms people and makes them more likely to purchase goods.

American here. I can't stand that forced positivity and chanting nonsense. I can't remember the standup comedian who this came from, but they had a bit where they were pointing out that it's bad enough that they have to work these awful jobs to provide for themselves, but they're forced to pretend they're enjoying themselves to boot. I've had to put on that faked positivity in a service position where my tips absolutely depended on it, and the only way I could really stand it was basically dissociating mentally and emotionally during the shift. You're a completely different person when you're in that position.

It was David Mitchell.

Thank you! I was going a bit crazy trying to remember.

It was from an episode of QI. Here's the clip if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/E9PSg0sQyfs

I'm from SF and spent a lot of time in Berlin.

My observation was that when you go into a shop in SF, you'll get greeted to a lesser degree, but more cheerfully.

In Berlin, you were greeted almost every single time, but more perfunctorily.

In that regard, I preferred the Berlin approach, even though it required me to respond more often. But I could simple acknowledge the greeting and keep going. It was more intrusive, but less demanding.

Berlin might be a wrong example for Germany, and a lot of expats complain about the cold shoulders they get in Berliner supermarkts. Berlin is famous for it's 'Berliner Schnauze' (Snout), and it has a long history of it's own that doesn't quite match rest of Germany.

> studies have shown

This (and the studies in the OP) should be taken with a grain of salt; there is a replication crisis in science, and psychology is one of the worst-affected fields.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#In_psycholo...

In some attempts at replication less than 50% of studies were reproducible, indicating that they were either p-hacked or simply badly designed. Priming results seem to be particularly flimsy.

I've spent a lot of time in big US cities and more rural parts of the country.

I had culture shock going to stores in the rural areas, because the friendly customer service attitude appeared to be much less fake. People didn't feel as rushed. They took a little extra time to have genuine communication. It drove me crazy, because I was accustomed to the efficiency of city retail, but I've come to appreciate it.

I had occasion to work the phone at my father's small business. He had numerous customers in rural areas. I think you're right; these people like to talk. They apparently have more time and don't mind a friendly chat for extended periods.

I think you've buried the lead here. Walmart isn't altruistic; all they care about is increasing sales. Sincere pleasantness is nice to encounter, but such sincerity doesn't come from company policy.

I hadn't heard that Walmart story before, but it fits with my experience. I'm a Brit, and Brits are nowhere near the US's level of fake positivity, but the German retail culture was still a surprise to me. It's not that Germans are rude, just not in the habit of pretending.

One of my favourite anecdotes from living over there was from a friend who'd become a regular customer of a particular takeout place. On one occasion he phoned up to place an order only to be greeted with "Oh, it's you again. Why don't you learn to cook?"

so they were being actually very nice caring for his wellbeing instead of money

One bit I left out: after taking his order they ended with "...and would you like a small cookbook with that?"

As someone who has emigrated from Eastern Europe (search for "Eastern Europe smile") to the US I can most definitely say that having strangers around smile/try to be nice (even just on appearance) is most definitely helpful as a stranger in a strange land. I would argue that in most social interactions with people we don't know there's going to be some kind of imbalance in knowledge/power and it's much more helpful when everyone tries to be nice in such a situation.

To take a very simple example: you are trying to go to a new place in a city. Maybe you just moved in the city or maybe you've been living here a while but you just never been to that place. So you try to find out how to get there using public transit. Naturally you'd need to ask strangers or the lady selling tickets. You do that in Eastern Europe (at least in my experience growing up there) and people will be at best annoyed, at worst they make comments about why you even ask, you are expected to know everything and generally they just act to make themselves feel superior and make you feel dumb. And while all of this is happening they look upset and mad which is not helping at all in an already stressful situation. In the US I had the opposite experience, worst case they cannot answer but they are making an effort to be nice to me and not just make fun of me.

I'm also pretty confident this isn't just "one" example, I grew up in an Eastern European country so plenty of experiences there and I've been in the US for 10+ years and it's been consistently a better experience day to day with strangers.

Now it might seem like that is just one silly interaction, shouldn't affect one much. But multiply this by thousands as you spend years in such a place and the difference becomes huge, I would argue it even forms your psychology.

So yes, US-type niceness is freaky and weird for those of us not used to it and it's most definitely "fake" in most cases, if you define "fake" as anything that is just skin deep, but that "skin deep" fake smile/niceness is ALL you need in day to day interactions with strangers, I'm not trying to make friends with everyone I meet and develop deep meaningful relationships, I'm just trying to take the right bus to my destination and you'll never see me again. So yes, please be nice and kind and smile.

On the other hand, I have found it hard to develop meaningful relationships in the US. It could be because the superficial niceness means it's hard to find someone that you can genuinely click with and/or many other reasons (immigrant, different culture, older age, etc).

I'm of the same opinion. IMO this needs to be a worldwide thing. Even if the smile is fake, it's a heck of a lot better than a scowl you'd get in Moscow or St Petersburg. And generally, even with a "fake" smile people are more likely to mean well, IMO.

No idea why you’re getting downvoted.

My other posts piss all over the approved liberal narrative, so people go in and bulk downvote.

I remember talking to French colleague who called this out as well.

If someone invites you over for dinner in the US you’ll often hear “that meal was amazing!” even if it wasn’t. That’s just polite behavior.

My colleague was saying they don’t really do that in France. You’d never say “that meal was awful”, you’d just say nothing more than “thanks for the meal”.

I thought it was a great example.

> If someone invites you over for dinner in the US you’ll often hear “that meal was amazing!” even if it wasn’t. That’s just polite behavior

You aren't saying it's impolite so say anything less, right? I've lived in the US all my life and that's not my expectation...it could be that cultural expectations are not uniform.

I am French and we will say that the meal was good even if it was not ("thanks, it was excellent" )

What if the meal was actually bad? Would you still say it? Some (not all) Americans would.

Obviously it’s a generalization, but an observation I found interesting.

Yes I would,especially if I was invited and saw that someone made an effort but that are just not that talented.

So in a restaurant I wrote not say anything (and words not come back), if the meal was truly bad I woke say it was not good and probably leave some comments somewhere (I did it only once because it was really bad).

I'm from grumpy part of Europe, I would say with specific disappointed expression "it was OK" meaning it was definitely not OK

I had a similar opinion as you until I actually travelled to the United States. I went to San Francisco to visit a girlfriend. As soon as I was landed I felt like this version of the experiment is in a whole other gear than Europe. Everybody you meet gives you their elevator pitch and a business card. They make sure you know you can actually call this person next week and he will be there. On the way in the BART from her college to SF we lost all our money while traveling to the city. We asked a business man the way to Alcatraz, he took us to lunch and gave us $100. He told us we should do the same when we have the chance back home because that would make the world better.

This kind of paying it forward never happens outside of the USA. That positive vibe is sincerely ment and it's sad to realize we Europeans take positive signals like a smile as cynical as we do. A smile lights up your brain with an injection of happiness.

Have you seen that sign on your Amazon package? It's not a mistake it looks like that.

It's most definitely US and Canada centric. I've lived and worked in many places around the world, and in no other place would you get the "friend" treatment when you go to a store or restaurant. It just creeps people out because it's obviously fake, and I've always wondered why it doesn't creep out North Americans. I grew up in Canada, and it's always creeped me out when salesmen or waiters come up to me and start talking to me like they're a close friend or something. But everyone else seemed fine with it.

It's particularly infuriating when the waiter comes up and does the "and how is everything today? Good? Steak nicely done?" routine while I'm trying to enjoy my meal or talk with someone.

I emigrated to the USA when I was 24 and have lived here for nearly 32 years. My step-father used to hate the "fake" "have a nice day" stuff in the US, but on his second visit, he realized that he was starting to like it. He knew it was "fake", but he knew that the person saying it knew too, and he came to understand that it was just a way to provide a more pleasant atmosphere. By giving into it just a little bit, a positive feedback loop starts to run, and everybody wins.

ps. my kids think that i'm grumpy, bad tempered and pessimistic :) they're right about one of them.

> It's particularly infuriating when the waiter comes up and does the "and how is everything today? Good? Steak nicely done?" routine while I'm trying to enjoy my meal or talk with someone.

As a surly grouch, I'd say that it's worth the annoyance for the cases when they get your order wrong. It's the compliments for finishing my food that I can't stand

Waiter checking up on you to see if you're satisfied with the food a minute or two after it's been served is not exclusive to US or Canada.

They just do it unobtrusively in other places.

Ha!

A couple of summers in the early 1970s, I worked as a stockboy at Woolco stores that were opening. I didn't mind the customers once they did open, but I could have done without the jingle that went out over the loudspeakers: "There's bargains excitingly wonderful/All the things you've been looking for/???/At your Woolco department store!"

But at least we didn't have to sing along.

i lived in germany before coming to the US, and i must say that one of the biggest differences that i noticed was what a pleasant experience shopping was in the US.

people were always polite, friendly and helpful.

company chants?

and here I was thinking that the intro to "Sausage Party" (the movie) was just playing on disney clichés 0_o

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/music/pdf/SB1.pdf

That is more than slightly sickening 0_o

I have suffered no increase in success as my encroaching grumpiness begins to prevail ever more successfully.

Dutifully, I declare the opposite.

Life was better when I was more open, more friendly, more curious- opportunities sprouted from seemingly nothing.

Now I'm a bit long in the tooth and I've had many harrowing experiences in trying to fight the large bureaucratic machine that is my organisation and have been left curt and bitter.

Now there are no opportunities, no "connections forged" and certainly not any career progression.

I do not recommend succumbing to grumpiness, nor bad temperament..

The only thing that matters is that you're genuine, and if you feel yourself getting to be like me, take a step back and consider what the cause is. There is no happiness here.

Perhaps you should just switch jobs?

After 20 years myself, this stuff feels so rote, offices are just gonna use what Google/AWS peddle... the world you knew is gone.

You didn’t “get grumpy”. You didn’t move on.

Thanks for the advice,

I have switched jobs and I will be starting in the new job in 3 weeks. I am excited and feel my curiosity burning excitedly.

But as for bureaucracy... it wasn't that we were trying to follow Google/Amazon. It was typical large company ego-stroking. People who are in positions of power and sit on ivory towers and give commands with no input possible.

Of course the stuff like OKRs came in- but these are peripheral things, not core to the function of the job.

The article points out that being grumpy brings success, which probably doesn't correlate with happiness.

I understand that, in some sense, this may be true. But notice that it doesn't say that not being grumpy is a recipe for failure.

I personally prefer to be good-tempered and not grumpy, and I am rarely in a bad mood. I call this dog philosophy.

It probably means that I won't have all the success and greatness and stuff that others have, but overall, I am much more content seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses.

My dog seems to agree.

Heh. I've used a very similar "live like a dog" philosophy myself to try to emulate the best traits of canine personality. Dogs are loyal and eager to please, they don't dwell on the past, they don't hold grudges, they aren't retributive.

That said, you have to be careful not to take it too seriously. Dogs are terrible philanthropists, they suck at planning, they aren't rational, they hate to share, etc.

Love it, and maybe you have heard of Diogenes and the Cynics (literally 'dog-like').

"There are four reasons why the Cynics are so named. First because of the indifference of their way of life, for they make a cult of indifference and, like dogs, eat and make love in public, go barefoot, and sleep in tubs and at crossroads. The second reason is that the dog is a shameless animal, and they make a cult of shamelessness, not as being beneath modesty, but as superior to it. The third reason is that the dog is a good guard, and they guard the tenets of their philosophy. The fourth reason is that the dog is a discriminating animal which can distinguish between its friends and enemies. So do they recognize as friends those who are suited to philosophy, and receive them kindly, while those unfitted they drive away, like dogs, by barking at them."[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes#Diogenes_as_dogged_or...

Even the 'best traits of canine personality'... aren't even true in a general sense. That's more of a human conception of the end result of natural tendencies, training, anthropomorphism, and how dogs are portrayed in the media.

> Dogs are loyal and eager to please...

I foster, train, and board dogs. Trust me when I say this idea that dogs are 'loyal and eager to please' is very specific to certain breeds (e.g. Goldens). Most breeds only become 'loyal and eager to please' if their owner is clearly in charge. I generally foster huskies. They've all been either from a puppy mill or have been feral (so in either case they have no real human interaction before I get them) and they don't really have any interest in what I want at all until they've been with me and trained for awhile.

> they don't dwell on the past...

Dogs don't not dwell on the past, either. They're more or less completely unaware of it. However they experienced an event doesn't become a memory that they later recall. However they interpreted those events at the time had its influence on their future behavior and they can never go back and re-examine that event. They do have a sense of time, but it's not like ours. It's based on smell. "That girl dog I like was here, but the scent has faded, so she was here, but she's not now."

> Dogs don't not dwell on the past, either. They're more or less completely unaware of it. However they experienced an event doesn't become a memory that they later recall. However they interpreted those events at the time had its influence on their future behavior and they can never go back and re-examine that event. They do have a sense of time, but it's not like ours. It's based on smell.

What is the evidence for this?

As a for-instance: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29261497/ The article is in French, but the abstract is in English.

If you search for "animals" and "episodic memory"[0] (the type of memory you think of as a 'memory') you'll find a lot of studies claiming no animals other than humans have episodic memory. I'm not certain that's entirely true (and a lot of the studies will have caveats). If you search for "dogs" and "episodic memory" you'll find some disagreement as well; not arguing that dogs have human-like memory, but more that whether an animal has "episodic memory" isn't binary (e.g., https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221... ).

Also interesting is this study on short term memory in animals: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03766...

[0] - https://www.livescience.com/43713-memory.html

Edit: Fixed links.

I can't read French, but the abstract states "dogs remember who and what happened but no study evidenced yet that they remember the precise time it was done."

That is a much lesser claim than "they're more or less completely unaware of it (the past)"

There’s plenty of more studies out there, many paywalled. I just offered you one so you’d get the idea and have a place to start if you were actually interested.

My point is that dogs don’t have a “past” to dwell on the way we do. Where you or I have a specific memory of playing fetch that we can replay, analyze, and put into new contexts, dogs have a sort of database of facts: “Rules of fetch”, “ball = fun”, “this human plays fetch”. They are “things remembered” versus “memories”.

I read all of your provided links, but I'm not convinced they support what you claim about dog memories.

I don’t know what to tell you, man. I don’t keep a list of books and papers I’ve read about every topic and sharing my direct experience isn’t possible. I gave you a starting point to sate your own curiosity. I don’t have any interest in defending a claim I know to be true on an off-handed comment on a low stakes topic. I’m not here to convince you or educate you.

Thank you for providing the links.

Reading your comment, I realized how squarely I fall into the grumpy group. Grudgingly agreed to the first part, the second part made me giggle.

Don't forget, take frequent naps and sprint as hard as you can when you get to some green grass.

Dogs definitely live in the moment, who else would ask for a full body massage when they meet new/old friends.

There's something to this. My beagle always remembers to stop and smell the roses. And then pee on the roses.

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it’s not the roses they are sniffing...

I have a friend who has an analogous “goldfish philosophy” for giving grumpy people the benefit of the doubt: when someone acts like a jerk he says “maybe their goldfish died this morning” and then forgets the incident as fast a goldfish would. You never know who’s having a bad day and he genuinely doesn’t take it personally. Of course sometimes he jokes that a person is a “goldfish serial killer” which means they’re a confirmed jerk.

Evolution came up with a range of tools that each work best in different situations.

If you're never kind, collaboration and group effort become hard. People don't want to join you. You will miss opportunities to strengthen your group. In the long run, your line will lose out.

If you're never "grumpy" or bad tempered or forceful, you'll just get obliterated eventually by some great force randomly sweeping the neighborhood. Do not think it never happens. Sometimes the best response is force.

And then there's everything else in between.

It's a range, and all components are there for a reason - they performed well in the evolutionary past, so they got included in the toolkit. Use it, and use it wisely.

The optimum is not a narrow point - it's a wide range of diverse responses. Width is crucial.

I would feel deeply insulted if someone compared me to a dog because of complacency, but to each their own. Whatever works for you, though I can't say I understand.

I will say I find less grumpy people easier to work with and I try to be pleasant to everyone I work with as a result; it's just the dog messaging I find confusing.

There's a difference between being grumpy and being an abusive asshole. Unfortunately, this article seems to conflate the two and seems to be rationalizing bullshit behavior from CEOs as being indicative of success rather than being too-big-to-fail.

I've worked with plenty of grumpy people that had a no-nonsense attitude but never let it get in the way of being genuinely helpful or used it to put down people.

I've also worked with assholes that were bad at their jobs and pretended that their no-nonsense attitude was helpful when it was not. It's a very fine line to walk.

An asshole behavior is not asshole behavior if you can accept. That is a judgement the observer has to make

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, here. Are you saying that, if someone is acting like an asshole, those around them should just accept it? What if everyone they work with judges their behavior to be that of an asshole? Does that make others wrong and the asshole right?

Having worked with (and for) a few assholes in my day, I can say that most of the time they aren't as smart, helpful, or clever as they believe themselves to be. Most of the time they add friction to a work environment and make other people around them miserable, and eventually those other people quit.

Thank you for your reply. I meant that grumpy/angry is an objective emotional state it doesn’t need judgement based on our opinions. “Asshole” on the other hand is a subjective feeling. And actually thinking again of your comment now I think you were referring to people who likes to complain but failed to point out the problem and couldn’t find out a solution..

This is the traditional Give and Take dilemma. Givers are just as likely to be successful, if not more. This is a good summary, in case you want to skip Adam Grant's book [0]

[0]: https://www.lemonade.com/blog/psychology-givers-takers-match...

I don't think that's quite true.

Optimists are predisposed to fall into the echo chamber trap. They don't have the muscles to question the status quo routinely. Everything is awesome, why change it?

They may be more charitable overall, but glaringly deficient where empathy demands action.

From the comments here I'm pretty sure "grumpy" and "bad tempered" are being used to describe far too many things and some of them are pretty bad.

Getting in to a rage and throwing things or just being vitriolic is not grumpy or bad tempered. You can be grumpy with how things are and state your mind firmly and easily be categorized as such. I wouldn't think that's a wrong category either, but it's absolutely different from disagreeing with others and then throwing things.

> Getting in to a rage and throwing things or just being vitriolic is not grumpy or bad tempered.

It is true these behaviors are not desirable and can cause stress with all participants. But they happen likely as too much had been oppressed and it was just too strong to hold any longer.

When you are angry you might do something violent. Continue to oppress with force without fixing the real issue will lead to more escalations..

>if I hear that idea again, I’m gonna have to kill myself

If he said that to me, I'd just repeat the idea.

Snark generally counters grumpy people and brilliant jerks.

Good way to filter the drama queens.

Productive pessimists tend to value or at least tolerate snark, the drama queen will just make everything about them and nobody gets anything done.

Causality is reversed. Being rich or at least comfortably wealthy allows you to act as you wish. How about we do a twins study on this, coaching one to be an unmitigated dick while coaching the other to be kind. Does anyone really think the dick twin will get ahead on average?

Yes? DickTwin's coaching should essentially guarantee this to be true. Maybe rename it to Psychopathy Training.

edit: that said, not all dicks are charming; so it's clearly not 100% success rate.

I got fired two times being frumpy angry with my team mates/lead/manager and I thought I could have changed the general hypocrisy in my last job. Instead I spent three years set myself straight with someone even more frustrated than me. I wasn’t authentic but now I’ve learnt to accept myself as i am. However if I wanted to throw an object or hit something really hard in fury now I will stop for a fraction of second to think if it worth(as I’m more sensitive to my heart feeling even in a rage, where I tended to ignore in my past hypocritical self). I once destroyed the phone when I got frustrated with my ex.

I realized now, that when you are in rage there’s still ration trying to speak not to over exaggerate or burning too much of the bridge — but someone not trained to respect self/heart feeling will tend to ignore that little sound...

My experience is the opposite: in one of my previous jobs, due to some circumstances that I will skip here, I became not only grumpy but outright rude. I would literaly insult people, calling them stupid during daily Scrum meetings, never did anyone any favor before loudly complaining "can't you just do that yourself?" first, and so on, and so on.

Guess what? it actually made my life easier, took some workload off me and earned me some respect (or maybe just fear, but who cares?) among my coworkers. I think it also was a factor for me getting a significant salary raise :)

In a previous job, some coworkers and my boss perceived me as being grumpy. Resting B*tch Face, more reserved, generally didn't partipate in break time video game sessions. In reality I just wanted to get my work done and go home to the family. It was one of (though not the reason) I was let go from that position. I've tried to learn from that experience, but still struggle with fitting in with those who think work is social hour and seem to get ahead by schmoozing and not head-down work. I know it's a balance, but it seems rigged for the outwardly social.

Yeah I totally understand that. I think it's important to remember that people are social creatures generally speaking. So what one may view as schmoozing, others may see as simply being social and relating to each other. People enjoy feeling good and liked.

I got off on the wrong foot with a coworker. The first time I needed to talk to him was because his code wasn't working, he tried to blame user error, it did not go well.

It took me months at the coffee machine talking about anything he wanted to talk about before he warmed up. Now he's often the first to say 'hi' when I enter a meeting room or support an idea I presented, instead of avoiding me.

This article is a load of malarkey.

Being grumpy and bad-tempered are predispositions toward having negative emotions in more situations than most people would.

There are two classes of evidence in the article.

The first is evidence that negative emotions are useful in certain situations. One does not need to be grumpy and bad-tempered to recognize such situations and act appropriately.

The second is anecdotes where successful people had emotional outbursts. I assert that the outbursts did not cause the success. Passion caused both the outbursts and the success, separately. Thus there's correlation between outbursts and success but not causation.

A friend once said to me:

“Some people say the glass is half full, some that it’s half empty. You say: ‘this water sucks.’”

:-)

Didn’t Bezos just have a high profile and very expensive divorce?

Weird. I guess being grumpy and bad tempered can cause problems in work and personal relationships too.

Isn't Bezos still the most wealthy person on earth, even after said divorce?

To me it sounds like people somehow assume that wealth, success, happiness are about the same thing, which necessarily isn't the case.

You can be wealthy and still miserable, successful without being wealthy, etc. I didn't really read the whole article but I got the understanding that they were mostly talking about entrepreneurial-style success.

Yeah, but we're here enjoying HN, and he's 'working'. So who's got the better lifestyle ?

Some people actually enjoy their work.

What's not mentioned in the article is that grumpiness is also associated with self-criticism. Look, I am a grumpy and cynical person in general. I play the piano as a hobby. I've played for almost 25 years at this point. Many people compliment me on my playing, and objectively, perhaps they're right. However, when I hear myself, I can't stand it. It drives me up the wall, and as I play, in my mind, I still sound like the five year old whose parents just enrolled him in piano lessons. It sounds bad to me continuously, but others seem to like it (and I've also won awards and such, so i know it's not just poor taste on my listener's parts).

But really, this kind of unfulfilable self-expectation leads to more practice, more doing, and more motivation. It's hard to motivate yourself when you think you're already the best at what you do (or are happy with however good you are right now). When you cannot stand the way you sound on the piano though, and you keep practicing to reach a the metaphorical carrot, then you naturally get better.

Awesome, glad to hear i don't have to change.

That's the spirit!

I've observed that grumpiness in a business setting is often a learned behavior of individuals who are too frequently distracted from their work by colleagues.

Constantly responding to questions with a gruff demeanor eventually decreases the number of interruptions and becomes self-reinforcing.

> Hugh Grant apparently hates every film he’s been in, even though they’ve made him $80m

Hey, we've got the first part in common. Why can't I afford a house.

(this is a sarcastic, er, ill-tempered, remark on correlation vs causation)

>Being bad-tempered and pessimistic helps you to earn more, live longer and enjoy a healthier marriage

but evidently it didn't help Hugh Grant stay with Elizabeth Hurley so how good could it really be?

Indeed, to strive to (even more of) perfection, you need to be discontent with the current state of things.

That is, you have to be discontent with things like 99% of the time. Because of this, you'll feel compelled to improve them. But the price of it would be being less than happy most of the time.

Wouldn't that make you more happy, not less? Always figuring out how to improve things and having endless possibilities to improve them is almost a definition of fun.

Just keep in mind: sometimes there's a fine line between being grumpy and being an asshole.

The word has a strong emotional direction and.. can we say it’s judgemental.. however I do agree there is a line of over exaggeration. It is not a physical line but heart knows when you crossed it

Sometimes I wonder if I live in a reality where everything is just created with a GPT-2 algorithm.

This is the most HN post ever.

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12263794

> Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is famed for his angry outbursts and insults (such as “I’m sorry, did I take my stupid pills today?”) yet they haven’t stopped him building a $300 billion company.

That's how you know the article was written in 2016!

(Amazon's market cap is now $1.5T)

Pollyanna's are the most annoying and fake people around. I'd rather be with Grumpy people who are factual, realistic and capable, than the "its always a beautiful day" Pollyanna crowd...

> I'd rather be with Grumpy people who are factual, realistic and capable

It's possible to be positive and also be factual, realistic, and capable. Being positive doesn't mean ignoring reality and glossing over everything negative. I'm a fairly positive person, but I definitely still have conversations where I say, "Yeah, this totally sucks, I'm not happy with it, and I think it needs to be fixed".

Approaching things in a positive, friendly, and collaborative manner has always served me and my teams far better than being grumpy and pessimistic about everything.

Yes. Can’t you be both grumpy and positive ? You are not satisfied with reality then you are positive because you are seeking change. However forced positivity needs attention. When you are in a bad situation and feeling stressed out is it more important to keep a smiling, or admit that you are stressed out and focus on solution ?

I dont think you know who / what a Pollyanna is...

Of course this message is brought to you by the British...

What a toxic message to push out to readers, especially in times of crisis.

If you're not a grumpy person by nature, I doubt an article is going to convince you to start being grumpy.

Not that it's even possible to change your innate nature. I'm grumpy by nature and every attempt to be more positive and carefree has been disastrous and miserable. Maybe it works the same way if you wanted to be grumpy

(2016)

Added. Thanks.

(2016)

Added. Thanks.

Wow 2016 was a different time. A lot of the controversy around the CEO of Away revolved around behavior that could be categorized as "Grumpy" or "Bad-Tempered" [1]. I guess it only pays to be "Grumpy" if you're a white man, or if the media attitude toward your industry is positive.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo...

The Away's CEO behavior sounds exactly like Steve Jobs' legendary quality-obsessive behavior, except that he would fire the responsible persons without giving them a second chance.

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