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.
I guess it is part tone or intent, I'll reply often "I'm good, how are you today (or doing, etc.) and get, "I'm ok (or I'm good, or "you know") and many times, "thanks for asking" in a sincere tone.
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.
It's also mentally exhausting and drains your willpower. While it may be a sign of good character, being like that 24/7 (even when you don't feel like it) is a good recipe for driving you insane eventually.
Making a "code" is like building a habit. Maintaining the code might be tiring at first, but consistently caring about others, just like consistently brushing your teeth, will inevitably get easier. If you truly are feeling exhausted/insane after treating people well for a day, its unlikely you think people are worth treating well to begin with.
I think most humans are kind by nature, since we're social beings. In a setting like a tribe or a small community, it's relatively easy since we depend and know everyone else. It's when we have to be like that to everyone, including strangers.. that's tough.
This seems like a very cynical article. On the behalf of everyone in Canada, the UK, and Australia, it's very common for people to reciprocate this sort of courtesy and genuinely mean it. In fact, I'd go as far to say that most people would be downright offended if you didn't reciprocate.
Similarly, most people go out of their way to thank transit drivers, and everyone holds doors. Perhaps an American could share some insight.
Seems pretty cynical to me too, but I've lived in either North Dakota or Minnesota for a couple of decades. It takes so little effort to be nice and have a conversation with people. Who knows, you might make the teller laugh and get through their day easier.
[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.
I am rather dismayed by the lack of interaction between people in my country (Greece). We don't talk to strangers at all, not even to say hi or hold a door open or anything. It's a cultural thing, people just don't think to talk to other people.
It's like that in southern California. Most people out here act cold and just want to keep to their own. People rarely say hello to anyone they pass on the streets. Just keep your eyes pointed forward and maybe you won't have to interact with another person. The mean streets of Orange County.
That was the biggest difference I noticed when I moved from the Bay Area to Texas. Everyone says hello, everyone asks how you're doing. I grew up thinking no one was ever nice to a stranger. It was unnerving at first but frankly it's more pleasant this way.
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 do not. I live in a VERY small town in Northern Coastal California, US (area population 948). I like the fact that I have time to talk to Jessica, Connie, Crystal, Bonnie, or Shaina, all possible cashiers at the only local small store.
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.
We absolutely have this at checkout in Australia, I go for self checkout whenever possible because of it. Most people working at checkout just don't care at all and just give out the minimum fake courtesies that their employer forces upon them.
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.
It's funny, the first time I heard this, I thought it was a really neat thing to say. It's like wishing somebody a good day, weekend, evening, whatever, not worrying too much about the specifics. The kind of laziness that seems more sincere.
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.
thanks for clarifying this. Being new to the US, I initially found it slightly strange when people would say that; but I've come to love the warmth and politeness that comes with it. Also, saying "Have a great weekend" usually makes the other person's face light up with happiness :)
Same. Funny how meanings of words have different precedence for different people. I imagine if I was an expert at waiting in lines, the word "waiter" might not immediately bring up an image of a person bringing food to my table. If I was from the UK, the word "line" might cause me to think of a telephone line or something, because they use the word "queue" instead. Does that mean they visualize people waiting in line when they hear the word "queue" in a computer science context?
The first thing I do when interacting with someone who is providing me a service is ask them how their day is going. Why? Because no one does this (I'm in London), more often than not it really makes a positive difference to this persons day, i.e. they are genuinely shocked that someone gives a shit (I do by the way) and it doesn't cost me a single thing to do.
The few time I tried that I got annoyed or even angry looks. And frankly, I'd be annoyed to - I don't want to tell some random stranger how my day is doing (it's none of their business) and I don't want to have to make up some excuse to deflect the question.
I always found it slightly jarring in London that people always asked if I was alright.. 'you alright'
I would reply with, why is something wrong, do I not look okay? Took me ages to realise this was just the equivalent of 'how are you' or 'hows it going' or whatever..
Still find it amusing that the British implication on meeting someone is that something is probably wrong, and at best it is 'alright'..
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.
I think he meant that everyone should care, not just that everyone should say the words.
I guess its really up to you whether you want to do it or not, but it is a pleasant attribute
Actually, if you do certain things while saying the words, it will help make you 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.
How often do they give a really honest answer though? I think for a lot of us, we aren't interested in meaningless pleasantries and if they are being totally honest often you just wouldn't care aout what they are saying. Sure you could happen upon an interesting conversation, often though it doesn't pan out like that.
In the US at least, please stop analyzing these types of social interactions literally. The subtext is quite different. Basically, "Hi, how are you doing?" is the equivalent of "Hi, I'm being a pleasant person going through this standard cultural greeting." Expecting something more from this pattern shows a poor understanding of the culture.
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.
I return the "how are you?" question with equivalent replies in shops all the time and if recipients were annoyed by it, I don't recall noticing. Being pleasant frequently helps me feel more pleasant. And anyway, I actually do hope they have a great day. I hope everyone has a great day.
I always genuinely care and end up looking like a smug asshole most of the time but there are a few times when someone does seem to feel really good that I care.
You should see how much meat they pack on my subs at the local sub place. ;)
Come to Spain then, most people don't care and there's no effort to hide that. Stuff like this happens often:
- 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.
I live in the US Midwest. Yes, it is true that if someone asks you casually "How are you?" they are not expecting your life story, and the waiter's question about "how's the food so far?" is generally not an invitation to give a three paragraph review of the food. But it is legitimately a time to ask for refills, and a clerk's question is legitimately a time to tell them about the bathroom being dirty or something. It may not be a close personal connection and you may not invite them to your son's graduation party, but it isn't quite the null, empty question this essay portrays, either. It's better than being ignored.
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.
Taken to extremes by the colloquial English greeting of "alright?" where the answer is "alright" and the formal introduction of "how do you do?" which is responded to with "how do you do?" with no change of inflection.
as someone from eastern europe, I'm always happy visiting countries/places where people are nice to customers by default, and I don't care if it's fake. I don't like being an accidental victim of pms when comming to buy a pack of cigs.
Somewhat related: am I the only one who's not in love with the new trend of startups sending fake "personal" messages to new users?
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.
Ugh, thank you for bringing those up. These are particularly bad when I sign up for enterprise trials for work. It's clever when they utilize their metrics to calculate how much time I spent on the site and then send a message corresponding with that length/depth that offers to better acclimate me to the product or just get me through a problem I may have had.
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.
The worst offenders to me are those that begin with a direct greeting ("Hi Jakob,") and are written by a specific person (in a personal tone and signed off by name). Am I supposed to believe that this was genuine (and not autogenerated)? That seems insulting to me.
> A corollary is there's a limit to what you can effectively care about.
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.
This article identifies a secret weapon that startups have when competing with a large, established business.
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.
The key element is this. Do you view customer support as a cost center or a sales channel? If a cost center, then you as a company are not going to care. If as a sales channel, then you as a company are going to care, and are likely to going to need premium pricing somewhere to pay for that.
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.
The angst in this post is really off putting. It reads like a series of observations by someone having a bad day after reading a book about existentialism (Mark Cuban is more likely to answer my emails than my friends?). He hints that caring can make you more successful as a business. But ultimately decides that we should care more simply to seperate ourselves from an uncaring world... because nobody cares. I don't find this particularly relevant.
Serious question here, not even joking: do you care about the mobile visitors to your site? Do you care that there is an obnoxious floating "contact" widget popping out from the side covering the text I want to read? This sort of thing happens on so many other websites too that I think it ironically fits right into the topic. I think a lot of people need to visit their own websites on a smartphone.
If your products are Target priced, it's uneconomical to care too much. If you work at McDonalds, caring too much will drive you nuts.
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.
When I am interacting with someone who is "serving" me in some way and they ask how I am doing... I almost always ask them back. It is quite interesting the different reactions I get. They pretty much have to be pleasant and I think it throws them off when people are pleasant by choice.
this is kind of a jerk thing to do because a server / cashier person basically has to be nice even if they feel crappy so when you ask them "how are you doing" you are forcing them to lie.
But cashiers/servers probably get asked that same question "how are you?" a hundred times per day. Customers who think they are being nice by starting small talk may have the opposite affect. It's all context really.Small talk in a busy line is probably not the best idea.
It all depends on the person, and there's no way to tell without asking. If someone doesn't want to talk, it's quite easy to tell from their response to the question. If that's the case, you end the conversation there, and nobody cares.
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.
It varies a bit by culture and establishment. I've run into plenty of coffee shop employees from non-chain stores who'll be happy to complain about their day if you inquire. Also got an unexpectedly long answer at a Trader Joe's checkout counter once, a whole story about a messed-up delivery resulting in a bunch of broken bottles, when I asked how he was doing.
There is truly nothing interesting about this observation, and pretty much a juvenile insight. Yes, give a shit about what you do, it'll be apparent in your work, yadadada.
As for the whole 'care about other people', that's just so ridiculous, I'm not even sure how this is on the frontpage.
Recently, many articles (including this one) on HN have provoked one reaction from me : "Um, yeah. What's so special about this? Maybe if you look harder, you're wrong"
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.
When I ask someone how they're doing and they say "good" it makes me a feel a tiny bit better. I don't know if they're lying or not, but I feed off of their good feelings none-the-less.
I usually "pay it forward" by also trying to be generally positive when interacting with strangers.
Thanks for the succinct bit of observation! It is something that no one really picks up on, but when you are told about it all you can think is "huh, that really makes sense". For that I thank you. I am going to go really ask someone how their day is going. =)
There was a meme at Google with a tombstone and the caption "Cared Too Fucking Much". I won't get into the story behind that meme, other than the observation that caring too much can be very damaging.
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.
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.