Comment by twobitshifter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by twobitshifter | Hacker News Reader

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In would say it goes even further than humblebragging, and ventures into narcissism and an inability to handle criticism, explain oneself, or accept help.

If the car insurance salesperson disagrees with you, maybe you should try to understand why? Did you really consider the possible that a tree branch could fall in front of your car or that you could get caught in a hail storm?

If the Apple store employee doesn’t understand why you’re obsessed with box sizes, explain that the MacBook in the smaller box is the one with the features you want and that’s the easiest way to identify it.

If someone gives you a look like “you’re stupid” it’s most likely that they don’t understand your decision not that they think you have an inability to reason. Sometimes you simply need to explain yourself, but it seems the OP has such confidence in their own decisions that they won’t accept any help or input from even the experts. After all as you noted, it appears that the OP has always been right in the end.

maybe a better title is "how to ask questions so I can be smug later". I've done this for sure but I've never advertised it later.

> explain oneself

I hate this, the idea that I should have to explain myself to a random stranger in a shop as if they are entitled to know anything about me. I buy a lot of sweets on Friday for the weekend and regularly the clerk behind the till will make a comment, "Thats a lot of chocolate! Who is going to eat all that! You must be having a party whats the occasion?". In front of a line of customers who are eager to get home I have to explain myself to the clerk "Im depressed!"... and then just stand there awkwardly waiting for them to finish doing their job.

I get it they are just trying to be friendly but I don't want it no one in the queue behind me wants it, no one wants to explain themselves to a stranger we will never meet again, I just want the sweets / laptop please and thank you.

> no one wants to explain themselves to a stranger we will never meet again

Even though I, personally, feel the way you do, the above doesn't ring true. Many people crave those small interactions with strangers, and welcome the opportunity to talk about themselves. That's the reason they're a social norm.

I'm in a very similar boat as you two (why does the barista at Starbucks care what my weekend plans are?), but I don't think it's always that people want to talk about themselves, I think they just want to talk to somebody, period. Humans are social creatures and have survived on our ability to form communities, so there is part of us that sometimes just want people to talk to, not necessarily about ourselves. For sure there are narcissists who do only want to talk about themselves, but I wouldn't say that's everyone.

You don't have to, and I personally also find small-talk with strangers rather tedious, but in the specific cases brought up by the author, it sounded like he would've saved himself time by just briefly explaining his reasoning. Which also would've had the nice side-effect of treating his interlocutors as rational human beings worthy of a measure of respect.

> I hate this, the idea that I should have to explain myself to a random stranger in a shop as if they are entitled to know anything about me.

You sound like someone who has never worked in any customer facing position. Many people come in wanting X. They don’t realize X has many consequences. You know if you just give them X then they’ll come back another day, leave a bad review, or say, “but why didn’t you tell me this?!?!”

I mean, ffs - this happens to me as a customer and I’m thankful. Sometimes there are obscene arcane scenarios that you can’t find out about through regular means that only that service rep will know about. They are mostly fine if you just explain what you’re doing - they’re safe guarding the company’s reputation. They have nothing against you asking for weird shit - they just don’t want your bad shit later.

> no one wants to explain themselves to a stranger we will never meet again

So you walk into the Apple store, walk up to an employee and when confronted with the question "How can I help you today?" what do you do?

Telling them "I would like X", seems like an unneccesary level of "explaining yourself". They should just know and understand exactly what you want from non verbal signals?

Thats not the scenario the scenario in the example was walking up to the staff and asking "I would like X" and then instead of selling you X they ask why you want X and would you not prefer Y?

Very annoying, I want X thats why I asked for it, I dunno if I want Y because I didn't spent time researching it like I did X. I want X not an argument there are lots of other place I can buy X if you are going to be difficult about it.

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