Why people don't ask
1. Debt aversion: Not wanting to repay the favor
2. Shame or embarrassment: asking reveals need, dependence, or lack of ability
3. Not wanting to impose
1. Debt aversion: Not wanting to repay the favor
2. Shame or embarrassment: asking reveals need, dependence, or lack of ability
3. Not wanting to impose
Even when there's a 90% chance of being accepted, the expected value could be negative
Many companies have a policy to give a discount, upgrade or similar if customer asks nicely for it. But somehow majority of people are just rude and they want discount because “your hotel is shitty, too expensive service, etc.” (put some lie or insult). There is no “thank you”. No “please”
So people will demand but not ask..
Asking nicely requires a relatively positive emotional state. Demanding a discount due to a perceived slight, doesn’t.
In my experience, it’s a lot easier for someone to stay or go into a negative place than a positive one.
If someone is in a customer service role, they’ll deal a lot with the other part of the population who isn’t (today) in that group, and they’re very memorable.
Folks are not usually doing the opposite because they are intentionally being ineffective. It's a matter of either lack of knowledge or experience on how to do better, or more commonly, inability to manage themselves to a better state in their environment, and an environment that doesn't direct them to being in a better state either. It can be very difficult to do. Some people can't do it even in the most ideal of environments.
So kudos for managing yourself to be in a good place in a harsh environment, or good fortune for being in an environment that directs you in a good direction - or likely a combination of both to various degrees. Either way, sounds like a plus for folks you interact with.
When people ask my business for a discount I always offer one to people who ask nicely.
1. Help people without expecting to be repaid for it in any form
2. Practice empathy for shortcomings of others
3. Speak up if you don't want to or are not able to help someone
Some reflection on them tends to be informative about many of the challenges on both sides, and the nature of the problem.
Some of them include shelters with:
- No dog rules (because many people have dogs which are poorly behaved, lack immunizations, and have attacked other people at the shelters in the past). Many folks have animals for companionship and protection.
- No drug rules, including Alcohol (because many people have gone on drug fueled benders and attacked others at the shelters in the last). Many persistent homeless folks have drug problems too.
- Sex segregation rules (because women have been raped by others at the shelter in the past). The problem is, many homeless women also have boyfriends that provide a significant degree of safety and support, and even with sex segregation, the shelters have predators.
But what else are they supposed to do?
If they don’t make rules to at least protect others in the environment, they’re making a giant attractive nuisance/hazard. If they make exceptions, they’re asking to be attacked or sued themselves. (You’d be surprised how many activists are happy to spend serious money suing over something like that).
They also sounds like a recipe for being taken advantage of or abused in an Urban environment, or if applied naively.
In my experience, do it long enough, and blindly enough, and it’ll end up collecting the worst - in any environment it’s applied to - when the group set is large.
Mostly because of a filtering effect. The folks who need help to get self sufficient will use the help, get self sufficient, then go elsewhere.
The folks who will fall back on bad habits, will use the help, and break themselves again, and then get into a cycle of dependence on the help until either the help is withdrawn (which often causes anger), or they find an even juicier offer of help.
It isn’t a large percentage of people who are like the latter group - maybe 1-2%. But given enough folks and enough time, and it’ll end up collecting a hard core group of people that will be a serious problem.
Also, one wonders why so many big charity donors are anonymous.
Not only asking, but giving is a potentially sensitive act that sometimes (perhaps from modesty) demands discretion/anonymity.
When giving money to a homeless person I notice I'll prefer to do it when nobody is looking, and move on quickly, avoiding too much of a "thank-you".
It's not just that act has to be "Kantian".
There's definitely something about giving that carries the same barrier, and it's remedied by anonymity. I'll put cash money in a charity box, but would never use an identifiable card/digital method.
Charities ought to know this if they're wise. that the "cash-less" society is the death sentence for them.
Sometime in the early 2000s the most of British charity was transformed (dragged through the mud) by corporate whackjobs, PR gurus, and Feng Shui design soothsayers to align their ley-lines and whatnot.
Charity shops stopped having any actual bargains in them, and the money boxes we used to enjoy putting spare change into vanished.
They made up all kinds of bizarre, frankly unbelievable stories about how the staff "weren't trained to handle cash" and that robbers would steal their charity tins (in broad daylight outside Waterloo station under 200 CCTV cameras... like Jimmy Reckon!)
Then all those charity scandals about abuse and corruption came out.
Heartbreaking what a few clueless, vicious vandals and scumbags in suits can do to brand reputations earned over centuries.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/04/secret...
This is a much bigger issue than people realise in our technological society.
Once, interaction with any doctor would be considered confidential. Today surveillance capitalism and so-called "big data" creates a new problem for everyone, young or old, male or female.
We've long known that many men "die of embarrassment", because they won't go to the doctor. Pride/shame aside, that now affects everyone. People stop reporting symptoms because they don't want the stigma or economic penalty resulting from data being "shared" (increasingly without consent for "research" etc) - potentially to employers, insurance companies, and various gatekeepers popping up in the digital world.
It's ironic at many levels.
The information age should give us better health through ease of communication and access to data. However, the research benefits to the many that accrue from big-data are a burden upon the few/individuals. Searching on Google for medical ailments is a sure way to let the advertising world know all about your health complaints, real or imagined, and invite spam, inappropriate and intrusive insinuations. And, as we know recently, for women seeking abortions it can lead to violence or imprisonment.
So there is an odd communistic utilitarianism at play that defeats the very benefits our technologies should bring.
The reason medical data sharing is risky is because _if_ it does leak, it can cause large stigma and economical damage. But I am not aware of any big-data related cases where that did happen. The legal protections (imperfect as they are) have either worked, or have caused the people who abuse them to hide their tracks.
That's a strong claim.
It took me 10 second to find these 4 stories of leaks of up to 45 million records and many written accounts of distress, lost jobs and broken relationships as consequences.
https://news.trendmicro.com/2021/07/28/biggest-health-sector...
https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/medical-data-leak...
https://securereading.com/medical-data-leak-database-of-huma...
https://americanretrieval.com/medical-records-breach/
But as my sibling poster says too, your unevidenced doubts are neither here nor there, because it's the (equally unevidenced with respect to specifics) doubts of ordinary people that matter.
And let's be honest, that mistrust is justified in a time where data leaks and abuse is rampant.
Medical professionals and researchers may all be saints, but their halos are only as bright as the company they keep... Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon... and other big-tech cloud infrastructure on which sensitive data systems are built.
Of course it's a tragedy. Somewhere in that data are cures and remedies. But we can't have nice things if some are allowed to crap in the punch-bowl and drive the guests out of the party.
And they have all kinds of stories these guys, dude I love talking to Jonathan Ramos here, dude way better than all therapists I've ever spoken to in my whole life combined. He told me "obviously you got tortured, look at the things you say, you lay out the truth for people clearly!" No picólogo could have ever said that! Dude categorically superior to every professional therapist! And that cost 4 dollars!