Nobody Cares
bennesvig.com
bennesvig.com
Sure. It's a decent enough reason. But it seems born from an overly cynical thesis.
How about a better reason? Care because you want to. Make a conscious effort to give every stranger you encounter the benefit of the doubt. Some will prove you wrong, naturally. But until they do, they're presumed innocent.
It's actually pretty remarkable how much of a difference this approach can make in your daily life. People on HN like to talk about "expanding their luck surface area," and other terms of that nature. Well, being genuinely interested in other people is one of the better ways to do it.
Our lives are stressful. Our patience is thin. Our guard is up. All of that seems to come with the territory of modern life. But resolving to push that crap down, and treat other people respectfully, takes an enormous amount of strength. And it's a mark of good character.
Have something you stand for in life. Have a code. Make being a good, friendly person part of that code. This isn't corny. This is strong. This is badass. James Bond lives by a code. Batman lives by a code. See if you can rise to the challenge, and do the same.
A sarcastic tone would throw off the cashier, or, if (my personal example) I am stressed or thinking of something else, of course my intent will be interpreted as "not caring," as, I probably don't.
It doesn't take that Much willpower just to be nice to people, and many times, you will catch the "auto response must say hi how are you" verbists off guard in a good way.
Habits like this are a muscle that can be developed. Relatedly, the concept of ego depletion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
Similarly, most people go out of their way to thank transit drivers, and everyone holds doors. Perhaps an American could share some insight.
[from the article] Does anyone who has ever said “have a good one” actually mean it?
Yep, I do mean it. I'm that sap. I wish you well and still sign all my e-mail "keep safe". I mean that too. The world can be an unforgiving place, no need for me to not help you along.
That's all I wanted to say, have a good day!
And it's not just the south, been this way everywhere else I go in the middle of the country.
(Except on Houston's roads, of course. That's a different world entirely)
I like the fact that when a lady looked lost in the local hardware store, I asked if I might help her, and I felt that I had the time to explain that she needed a certain tool due to the materials she was working with and help her find it.
I have plenty of time to run my service business, write code for fun, and yet also make sure my chickens are fed on time, the cherries got picked, etc.
Instead of tiring, I find it energizing, and I am more towards introvert than center on the introvert/extrovert scale.
There is one nice thing about traditional frisian greeting:
The first one greets, moin and the traditional answer is moin,moin. We often confuse people from southern Germany and the rest of the world, because we use that greeting around the clock, even if moin sounds a lot lot like morning.
But the translation of moin is just good. So we avoid all those how are you, fine thank you nonsense, and just greet each other with good and good,good.
Day. It means "have a good day".
Now it's become just another greeting, part of our business culture. The fact that it's probably in some ESL textbook kind of kills the intent. Probably a sign that I'm getting old.
Anybody know what the young people are saying to each other nowadays? Aside from racist, homophobic slurs, I mean.
On first pass, I read this and thought he spelled 'bytes' wrong. ^_^
Strange.
I think it's something everyone should do.
This isn't true. It costs you several things, actually: time, at the most basic; some emotional investment, especially if you're like me and find talking to be outside your comfort zone, double plus when it's with strangers; and social regard, which we can hope is paid back but it's not guaranteed (the definition of a gamble).
People who aren't willing to make these expenditures won't ask. Indeed, they shouldn't ask, unless they're intentionally pushing their personal boundaries.
Just because you're wealthy in certain respects does not mean it's okay for you to tell other people to spend in those respects; they might be impoverished in those areas.
Nah, i don't think so, because most people (me included) wouldn't actually care and then it would devolve into meaningless politeness. I prefer that only the people (like you) who actually care signal that they care.
There are two things you need to do:
(1) say it intentionally. Pay attention to how you say it, and deliver it earnestly with your head up and be prepared to
(2) listen to the response. Give due consideration to the answer and don't dismiss it. This is a window into someone else's life: treasure it, regard it with curiosity, but not intrusively.
Most people will start actually caring about the other person as a result of doing this a few times.
I have a coworker who, upon arriving to the office every morning, walks by my desk and asks* "How are you doing?" and every morning I say "fine" with varying levels of sarcasm (and eyerolls). Does she ever notice my tone? Nope. She just parrots back "that's good!"
Most of the time, I think people are programmed to ask out of some socially expected behavior...but I'm pretty sure they don't want to hear what the actual answer is.
"Well, I woke up to my cat knocking a vase off a table and having to clean up broken glass at 2:30 in the morning. Then when my alarm went off, I got out of bed and stepped right in a pile of cat puke. Oh, I'm also crampy and I hate this job."
Somehow I don't think that will go over too well.
____
* as much as one can ask when their face is engaged in whatever is on their smartphone and not what's going on in front of them.
Breaking out of this is easy. As other people have mentioned, simply departing from the script is effective. For example, you can follow-up "Hi, how are you doing?" with "How's your day been going?" or "It's pretty busy in here." There's also subtext here and it's basically "I'd like to engage in a conversation."
I'm not even sure how you ask a person how they're doing in a way that lets them know you mean it without sounding condescending.
You should see how much meat they pack on my subs at the local sub place. ;)
- having to chase a store clerk while he flees and tries to hide because his chatting with his friend on the cell is obviously more important.
- "Oh could you also please bring ..." replied with a "why didn't you say that before?" at say a restaurant.
I used to be annoyed by fake attention in the North Americas, but after a couple years back here, gawd how I miss fake. They may not really care about me, but they care about trying to make the experience pleasant for the customer.
Fun hack: "How are you?", "What's up?", "Hey", etc., are all fungible. It is perfectly acceptable to answer "What's up?" with "Hey" or a question in return. Fun.
I know you want to show you care, but I haven't had 5 minutes to try out your app and you're already asking me if I need any help and when we can schedule a Skype call so you can show me all your cool features.
I usually just ignore these messages, but always feel slightly bad on the off chance that it actually wasn't an automated message and I just snubbed a real person.
But recently? I didn't even go to that site when I got the launch email. Instead of asking me why (through a form on your site, not one-on-one through an email) or nudging me to check if now's a better time to poke around, they're going to do a personal webinar for me?
I recently had this kind of inbox harassment on my home account and every time I saw another email asking me to connect with them, I felt a little sad. Were they having a hard time reaching the numbers they wanted? Was everything okay at HQ? Kind of depressing, but that's the only way I could justify the amount of emails I was receiving without ever showing interest except for whatever time and dimension it was when I signed up to begin with.
I don't really know why I put myself through it, the unsubscribe button is right there. I guess it just kind of fascinates me, the combination of hot messes that are creepy sales outreach and HTML emails.
Maybe I'm just too loose with my email.
Maybe I just care too much.
A big part of what makes us geeks is caring too much about the wrong things (according to normals anyway).
In absolute terms, maybe, I'm not sure.
But in relative terms, by definition, there is a limit to what you can care about.
Care more about your job than your kids, that's a problem. Care more about your friends than your spouse at a time when they need your support, that's a problem.
Check out Dunbar's Number (a.k.a. the monkeysphere).
I have worked as a programmer for (a) several large banks and (b) my own startup business: Nothing comes close to the level of care you feel to your users when you run your own business.
When a user gets a NullPointerException, I take personal responsibility and want to fix it as soon as possible. When a user emails me a question, I want to answer it well and as soon as possible. If the software looks ugly or is not intuitive, I get a strong urge to improve it.
They say that a good programmer can be 10 times as productive as an average programmer. Well it is also true that a good programmer can be 10 times as productive as him/herself - it depends on the environment.
Note, one of the offered examples is MediaTemple. I know the people at MediaTemple pretty well, and when I made that comment to them they all agreed with me that MediaTemple views customer support as a sales channel. It also has premium pricing compared to the rest of the web hosting industry. So while I cannot vouch from first hand experience that my comment fits all companies that care, I know it does fit that one.
If your product is Tiffany priced, you'd better care a lot. If you work at the French Laundry, you'd better care a lot, and make sure your peers do too.
In either case, losing touch of the customer will force you to lose touch with the business.
do you feel better now?
Anecdotally, I have started many conversations with service people this way, and I'm not much of a talker. In fact, it's usually them telling me about how horribly things are going, and I just listen. It's interesting how often a perfect stranger will open up to you if you just show a little empathy.
As for the whole 'care about other people', that's just so ridiculous, I'm not even sure how this is on the frontpage.
I always ask back, "How are you doing?", and have always received a smile and a "Good, thank you" in response - never offense.
Maybe if you didn't lie to the cashier at Target and told them what you didn't find, you would notice that some people might go out of their way to help you.
Have a good one? If we start being so literal about everything in English, we're going down a very dangerous road.
It's funny that the author is writing on the topic of "caring", but himself comes across as cynical and overtly negative.
Wish I could say I invented that but I stole it.
I usually "pay it forward" by also trying to be generally positive when interacting with strangers.
Good plan otherwise, though.
I think people develop the blah attitude after exposure to the consequences of caring too much. At some point, they overcompensate by getting the attitude that nothing is worth caring about, as opposed to the more reasonable and strategic decision not to care most of the time.