

Pretending That You Care - breily
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/pretending-that.html

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petercooper
The current situation has occurred because it makes economic sense. Parking
attendants and sports store attendants don't require many skills (since they
have computers, automated cash registers or other staff to call upon), so
they're cheap.

Workers in grunt-level jobs will, in the majority of cases (though not all!),
do as much work as is necessary to keep their job. It makes economic sense.

Some people ARE naturally friendly or gregarious even at minimum wage and
we've all bumped into a few friendly McDonald's servers here and there, but
people like these are rare in areas where their pay is low and their costs are
high. It makes sense, then, that people earning a pittance in New York City -
one of the most expensive places on earth - are going to be, on average, surly
and not very Mary Poppins-esque in their behavior.

If the city of New York or the sports store wants customers to get a better
service from their employees (which they generally don't), they need to pay
more money and give them incentives. As it is, companies tend to give the
employees incentive to be MORE unfriendly, whether by incentives to issue more
tickets or with store policies that prevent staff helping customers to their
full extent.

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dhs
There doesn't seem to be much evidence supporting the claim that people who
earn more money are therefore more friendly. Particulary not in NY, where
being nice in public can mean not being taken seriously.

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petercooper
I guess what you say might be generally true for public facing staff, although
I still think friendliness (or fake friendless) can appear when incentivized
or required. Examples would be the hotel industry, sales (think prestige car
dealerships), and any low-demand hospitality industry generally.

This effect is particularly true amongst the self employed who generally want
to keep your business. My dentist, for example, is friendly, otherwise he
knows I'll go elsewhere. My doctor, however, is not, but he's state-employed
so doesn't care whether I stay or not.

~~~
dhs
True, of course, but I wasn't talking about friendliness not happening in New
York homes and offices. However, from my experience, in public life there you
can get more easily punished for not sporting a pokerface than elsewhere, and
it's one of the very few places where I've been going out at night with locals
habitually carrying guns.

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DenisM
In the spirit of this site may I suggest that the problem is that business
owners see no cost-effective ways of aggregating customer feedback. Clearly
some of them don't even care, but even those who do have no way to do it -
barrier is too high. This an opportunity for an enterprising hacker out there.
Difficulty: involves a lot of working with people. :)

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vitaminj
Parking inspectors aren't even supposed to deal with customers. Why should
they be trained to "pretend to care"? Sounds like a waste of money to me.

~~~
tomjen
Because they can skip a _ton_ of angry complainers by treating people a little
decently.

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dualogy
Yeah, but what's in that for them?

~~~
dhs
I think the point Godin's trying to make is that people who habitually "play
nice" with others, even if starting out as pretenders, supposedly end up
living a happier life. This might be a contested claim, and I'm not sure
whether there's any research on this exact topic (the results that I've seen
published by Martin Seligman point in this direction, at least), but
personally, I've seen it working: "radiating niceness " seems to create a
feedback loop of sorts. The theory would be that a parking inspector of above-
average niceness would lead a life of above-average niceness, which would be
the reward (for some).

However, the scene Godin describes plays in New York. And I'm not sure that
the average New Yorker can be convinced that "playing nice" is compatible with
being a true New Yorker...

