
It pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered (2016) - Hnaomyiph
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160809-why-it-pays-to-be-grumpy-and-bad-tempered
======
Barrin92
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.

~~~
koheripbal
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.

~~~
will_pseudonym
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.

~~~
kentrado
It was David Mitchell.

~~~
will_pseudonym
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](https://youtu.be/E9PSg0sQyfs)

------
dijit
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.

~~~
chchchngs
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.

~~~
dijit
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.

------
ldd
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.

~~~
ryandvm
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.

~~~
cgriswald
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."

~~~
baggy_trough
> 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?

~~~
cgriswald
As a for-instance:
[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29261497/](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...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216311423)
).

Also interesting is this study on short term memory in animals:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03766...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635714003027)

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

Edit: Fixed links.

~~~
baggy_trough
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)"

~~~
cgriswald
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”.

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

~~~
cgriswald
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.

~~~
baggy_trough
Thank you for providing the links.

------
fzeroracer
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.

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

~~~
finaliteration
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.

~~~
chahex
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..

------
FanaHOVA
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...](https://www.lemonade.com/blog/psychology-givers-takers-matchers-2/)

~~~
hinkley
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.

------
0xCMP
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.

~~~
chahex
> 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..

------
vsareto
>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.

~~~
hinkley
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.

------
peteradio
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?

~~~
portroyal
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.

------
chahex
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.

~~~
chahex
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...

------
rjohnk
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.

~~~
lsavage
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.

~~~
hinkley
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.

------
brlewis
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.

------
js2
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.’”

:-)

------
deeblering4
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.

~~~
bob1029
Isn't Bezos still the most wealthy person on earth, even after said divorce?

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

~~~
bob1029
Some people actually enjoy their work.

------
tathougies
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.

------
mrnobody_67
Awesome, glad to hear i don't have to change.

~~~
vmchale
That's the spirit!

------
Plough_Jogger
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.

------
klyrs
> 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)

------
bryanrasmussen
>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?

------
nine_k
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.

~~~
zzzcpan
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.

------
MrZongle2
Just keep in mind: sometimes there's a fine line between being grumpy and
being an _asshole_.

~~~
chahex
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

------
user00012-ab
Sometimes I wonder if I live in a reality where everything is just created
with a GPT-2 algorithm.

------
voydik
This is the most HN post ever.

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12263794](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12263794)

------
puranjay
> 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)

------
12xo
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...

~~~
finaliteration
> _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.

~~~
chahex
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 ?

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

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

~~~
joshu
(2016)

~~~
dang
Added. Thanks.

------
otterley
(2016)

~~~
dang
Added. Thanks.

------
tqi
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...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-
korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion)

~~~
ponker
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.

