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Comment by mbech | Hacker News Reader

I'm all aboard with being pleasant and respectful of others, but find some aspects of this distasteful. Specifically, the portions of the author's "politeness" that involve performance, or adhering to a script I find off-putting. For example:

"Just ask the other person what they do, and right after they tell you, say: 'Wow. That sounds hard.' "

While it seems that many aspects of "politeness" are intended to trigger pleasant feelings in the other person (which seems harmless enough), I find it hard to be in favor of something so disingenuous. Even when it comes to small talk, I think one can be both respectful and charming without having to fall back on a script and cheapen the interaction.

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I think the author is treading a fine line between "nice person" and "confidence man", maybe without realizing it. He's describing social engineering, and I have no doubt that it's a very effective strategy.

> “I thought you were a terrible ass-kisser when we started working together.”

> She paused and frowned. “But it actually helped get things done. It was a strategy.” (That is how an impolite person gives a compliment. Which I gladly accepted.)

There is something disappointing about realizing that someone's confidence tricks do work. It sounds like this coworker was grappling whether this is a strategy that they should adopt, because they can see the efficacy, but it feels morally painful.

I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt when using tricks like these for work, especially if you're a politician or marketing person, or something else where appearance and illusion dominates the field...

> One of those people is my wife

But this makes me cringe. I know that if I was this person's partner and I read this article, I would start to feel very uneasy.

I think the distrust of confidence men is that its a lie. They have an ulterior motive and are willing to say whatever you will respond to.

With politeness, ideally there is no lie. It's not a polite surface--its a core personality trait. As he described, you may be polite to people you dislike but that's because you know you may simply be having a bad day so no sense in taking it out on a person, or pushing aside a budding relationship. That's really the story of his wife: he was polite, thus he left the door open to meet her again and not sour her impression of him by reacting rudely.

He gives the lie to himself by (almost compulsively!) categorizing his 'marks' as impolite when he feels that they've failed to realize or follow the same rules that he understands so well. It's well and good that he's willing to give people the benefit of the doubt if they're having a bad day, but being unable to relate his coworker's compliment without also noting that it is, in fact, the mark of an impolite person demonstrates that, at core, he doesn't hold her in particularly high esteem. So what's the point of being polite?

The point is to allow people to get along, get to know each other, and profit from each other's company, despite our human failings. We all have things we'd like to hide, moments of weakness, beliefs, distastes and intolerances both logical and otherwise, all of which keep us apart. Politeness is the strategy which allows us to keep all that shit to ourselves, in check, so that we can get along.

Personal growth through empathy.

As in the example of the jeweler, the author's politeness caused the woman to reveal information about herself. And as he states later in the article, he actually enjoyed learning about her work. He now understands this person's perspective a bit better.

I would be interested to know how he has handled conversations with similarly polite people. Did they arrive at a common ground, resulting in a profoundly enlightening conversation, or did they end up in a sort of politeness stalemate, with neither party wanting to disclose information about themselves?

Except his coworker didn't offer a complement. His coworker offered an admission that what she thought was a personality flaw ended up working out. It was, in fact, a rather impolite and off-putting delivery. I see no problem with his description of his coworker as being impolite. The important bit about that interaction was that, because he was a polite person, he didn't immediately treat the impolite remark as being off-putting or insulting or any other way that another not-so-polite person might take it, but he understood that this was just his coworker's way of offering a complement, and that he should take it as a complement despite the delivery.

In other words, a polite person forgives other people for inadvertent impoliteness and recognizes the intent behind the words.

In my opinion, this is simply making a concerted effort to like this person, and start comfortable dialogue. Even knowing this is a script, I'm excited to talk to this guy, rather than the usual challenging, testosterone-filled reactions I deal with on a regular basis. However distasteful and/or transparent, at least its a positive environment for conversation. Nothing is worse than talking to someone and thinking, their guard is already up

I once felt this way as well (and a little part of me still does), but I think its normal.

For the past few months, I've talk to possible 12-20 people per day, salesmen, marketers, business owners, the works. On occasion, I'll talk to someone and they've completely forgotten who I am, and I find the conversation goes the exact same way as before. Even if I'm 'off script', they're still going through the motions they rely on, and probably don't realize they ask the same questions in the same way and give the same responses.

For my part, there's only so many ways I can respond to a given situation. So what if I happen to fall back to well worn neural paths, and spit out "wow, that's sounds so hard".

What's disingenuous about it? To them, it probably is hard, and you're just reaffirming that fact. If they said "my job is easy", you would go "off script" and hit them with "oh, do you ever wish things were harder at work?", or an equivalent.

The mechanisms and communication patterns are repeated, but every interaction and person is unique, and there's nothing cheap in that.

The disingenuous aspect is simply having a canned response intended to induce positive feelings (intended to make them like you?) regardless of whatever they are saying. Even if it's often factually correct (e.g. "Everyone thinks they do difficult work") I still think it's insincere to have this line up your sleeve that you march out regardless of input from the other person.

It's ok though :-) It's a little inaccurate, maybe, but it's not really insincere. What he's saying is that he'd like to hear more. And he would.

"What do you do for a living?" is a canned question to begin with. It's what you ask when you don't know what else to say. People in social situations usually aren't there to talk about work, they're often there to get away from it. The point of the canned response "oh that sounds hard" is to give the other person an opening to talk if they want to, because the phrase signals that they have a sympathetic listener, but it doesn't require them to do so (because you didn't ask a direct question). It also signals that you aren't about to start asking direct questions about their job, which is something they probably don't want (because, again, this is a social situation).

You may decry it as "canned" all you want, but it's a phrase designed purely to allow the conversation to flow and to make the listener feel like they aren't being put on the spot. I bet you have a bunch of canned questions/phrases you trot out in social situations too, for various reasons, you just haven't catalogued them.

It's meant to be a phrase that will draw more information about the job; it's not a compliment.

Instead you could say something like "I don't know much about that line of work, what sort of challenges do you face?", and I think you'd get the same results. His phrase gets the same response while using less words.

This and other statements only work when he is actually listening and genuinely interested.

He clarifies that his interest is genuine, at the end.

"For all of my irony I really do want to know about the process of hanging jewelry from celebrities."

On the other hand, I know what he means when he says "I’ve found that people will fear your enthusiasm and warmth, and wait to hear the price." I know someone who operates like him, and based on that experience, it's weird for someone to be super nice and try to engage you enthusiastically when they know nothing about you. Maybe the person I know just does it wrong, I'm not sure, but even if they are genuine, I always have an inkling suspicion that they aren't.

About having a predefined script of things to say: we all have them, whether or not you realize this consciously is a separate matter. It might be a bit disingenuous to use such a script, but that slight is less important if the conversation doesnt feel disingenuous. The only difference to the other participant is whether or not he knows of the disingenuousness. That is a cost which, however, can also be offset by potential gains. In this case, the gain is sympathy. People, in most conversations today, remain remarkably distant and non caring.

For example, contrast how the following two sentences make you feel: "That sounds hard" and "I don't know much about that line of work, what sort of challenges do you face?" The first sympathizes with you whereas the second is more interrogatory which distances the speaker. The first is something a friend might say and the second is something an interviewer might say. Lastly, the line isnt meant to be a literal script pages long, but rather as an icebreaker to make this person feel like they can talk to you without being interrogated. Where the conversation goes after that is completely unknown. This is also the logic behind trying to put off asking "what do you do", because you again become an interviewer.

Hypothetically, what if you actually believed it in every instance? That is, what if you genuinely felt (as I do) that nearly all jobs are hard. Granted, some may be harder than others, but I've never met anyone who worked a job I would describe as "not hard."

If author had put in an internal check for "do I really believe what I'm about to say" and came back with a "yup" every time before speaking, I'd have no problems at all.

However, as I see it, the pleasant lie baked into the original case is essentially "regardless of what I might genuinely think about what you just said, I'm going to give a response to make you feel good about yourself thereby making me more likeable."

*rephrasing

You will run into an awful lot of people thinking you are being sarcastic.

Conversely I find it really annoying when I tell someone what I do and they say "That sounds hard" or "You must be really smart". It's dismissive. Like, that person has written me off as someone they're capable of interacting with. I get that it's intended to be complimentary, but it's quite alienating.

It's not like it's rocket science (apologies to rocket scientists), you could almost certainly understand if you took a few minutes to try. Not only that, but who says that's the only thing I want to talk about anyway?

> I think one can be both respectful and charming without having to fall back on a script and cheapen the interaction.

Sure, one can be. But what about with people you find incredibly boring or distasteful? Usually we'd just choose not to interact with those people, but that's not being charming.

I would say you should hold off your judgement of value a bit. That is the charming part, to give a chance to people to interest you. Maybe they will too find it boring or distasteful and you will have a chance to be charming giving incentive to they chase their dreams. Or recognize that if they find what they do interesting, that is enough. There is no reason to judge how they experience their job. It is not like it is common to meet a dictator or something.

I agree with your parent comment, where a script that includes a fake reaction cheapens the interaction. Be open to diversity is a more honest way to be charming.

EDIT: 6d0debc071, for some reason I can't reply once more. But my answer is very much in the line of mbech last comment here. Use something that doesn't involve deception. A question rather than an affirmation.

> There is no reason to judge how they experience their job.

I wasn't saying that you should, indeed some of the most boring people I know find themselves endlessly interesting. The scenario I'm suggesting is closer to: You give people a chance to interest you, your interests don't align with theirs - now what?

Or recognize that if they find what they do interesting, that is enough.

Exactly. I'd have few issues if the original author had used a canned response like "Oh, do you enjoy it?" or anything that didn't involve deception.

Following a script to start a conversation can help if you lack social confidence. But it shouldn't be a means of manipulating people. That seems a bit too much like being a Pick-Up-Artist.

Most of our social interactions are "performances."

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