Be friendly, interested, and acknowledge their existence.
You will be amazed how soon they think you’re a wonderful person.
What I find amazing is how little it takes: make eye contact, smile, ask a question or two. They’re in a near complete drought for people who treat them with even a smidgen of kindness, respect, and interest.
If you need a self-interested angle: Once you’ve established this relationship (shallow as it is), you will be astounded at what they will be willing to do for you, often without you even asking.
File this post in “absolutely obvious things most people don’t do.”
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philadelphialawyer
Meh, of course you should be polite and courteous, to everyone. But, having done some blue collar work myself, and growing up blue collar, the upshot sounds a little bit patronizing. No one wants to be disrespected, but very, very few people, blue collar or otherwise, will love you, or even really like you, merely because you are not disrespectful, nor should they.
Ian Welsh
Not my experience at all. This works for me, routinely.
And I’ve been on both sides of the line. Also, a misreading of the post, since that goes beyond not being disrespectful, though not a great deal.
philadlephialawyer
Really? You merely smile or make eye contact with a blue collar worker, and he or she immediately thinks that you are “wonderful?” Perhaps they are merely responding in kind. You are nice to them, so they are nice to you. But that hardly means they love you or think that you are a wonderful person.
mike
Phil–Good lord, just give it up. I’m not going to engage in one of your self-impressed debates over this. You’re a putrid human being, demonstrated with every comment here. Just give it up.
Stirling Newberry
Do not be disabled.
jump
Engage people with respect and equality and they will reciprocate (unless they think they are above you). It may not be love and trust all at once, but it is a bridge, a reaching out, that is appreciated and recognized.
Smile and make eye contact sometime PL. Do it as an experiment.
Ian Welsh
Jaysus Christu: over a period of time making eye contact with, talking to, smiling at people who are not used to receiving that does make them like you a lot. Add taking a bit of an interest in their life, and yes, the effects can be impressive. Give it a try. (And yeah, all I just did was synopsize the post, which you seem to have deliberately mischaracterized.)
JustPlainDave
I would add to Ian’s sensible prescriptions: entertaining the notion that the person you are interacting with may actually possess more formal education than you and, depending on your relative job specialities, may make more than you do (admit it, most people find that important).
philadelphialawyer
When did I ever say that I do not smile and make eye contact and generally act pleasant towards blue collar workers?
I simply find it patronizing to think that blue collar people, again, who I grew up with and come from, will “love” you for it. Of course they respond positively to it, most people do, but they are not simpletons, who regard people who show them the slightest courtesies to be “wonderful” on that basis. The notion of my father or grandfathers “loving” you merely because you ask them a few questions is, to me, not only way, way off base, but more thayn a little insulting.
And I fail to see how that makes me “putrid,” poster “Mike.” Furthermore, Ian Welch posts his ideas here and invites comments. If he only wanted folks who agree with his every word to take advantage of that invitation, perhaps he would say so. And, really, I did not ask you, “Mike,” to engage in debate with me at all, ever. So don’t flatter yourself.
subgenius
So what’s the secret to not being treated badly by white-collar powertripping assholes, then. That seems to be a far bigger problem…
cathyx
You write this as if there aren’t any blue collar workers reading your posts. I’ve been a blue collar worker all my life and I’ve been reading here for a few years, and I will say that if that eye contact and smile are perceived to have ulterior motives, they won’t work. I like to think that I’m astute enough to recognize the difference.
Stirling Newberry
Cathyx
Yes, if you can fake not having ulterior motives, the rest is a piece of cake. And yes, there is a way to fake them.
Spinoza
Just a tip here from a short order cook….
Don’t come to our restaurants 5 minutes before we close. It’s really irritating. If you must, be courteous and tip your server well. We also, believe it or not, have lives outside of 12 hour days cooking your family’s meals.
Ron Wilkinson
I’m a retired carpenter and I find this post patronizing. If someone is doing a service for you or to you being polite is enough. It’s just another transaction.
CMike
What’s that old John Emerson line [LINK]? It’s goes something like, “Right-wing populism if fake, but left-wing elitism is real.” Anyway, this post made me think of it.
markfromireland
@ Ian
Yes it’s all blindingly obvious. Giving people the idea that you perceive worth in them, particularly if they do not often experience that feeling is exactly how loyalty and devotion are built.
If you’d titled your posting: “How to Be Liked or Even Loved by those lower down on the pecking order than you are” you probably wouldn’t have elicited the squeals of mock outrage.
That’ll larn ya :-).
mfi
Stirling Newberry
Right wing populism is real, consider Nebraska – the latest state to outlaw the death penalty.
LabGuy
I’ve worked many years in the husk-like layer of business that serves customers. The real test for patrons is when they have a problem that gone past an easy recovery point. Some can’t resist vindictive actions, even if I, the peon, am not the chemist who made a less than perfect carpet cleaner or the publisher who misprinted that price on ninja turtles. The ire of the one does not outweigh the policies of the vast corporation, but if the yelling stops, you will be liked 100% more.
philadelphialawyer
“Yes it’s all blindingly obvious. Giving people the idea that you perceive worth in them, particularly if they do not often experience that feeling is exactly how loyalty and devotion are built.”
You really think that? You think your cashier or barista at Starbucks is loyal and even “devoted” to you because you engage in some common courtesy? I can tell you from firsthand experience that it doesn’t work that way. Again, naturally, most folks behind the counter prefer courtesy and respect to rudeness and disrespect, but they don’t become loyal and devoted if they receive it. Just look at the words you are using! “Devoted!” Because you smile and say “hi?”
As poster Labguy says, show me how you act when there is a problem, and it will mean more to me.
“If you’d titled your posting: “How to Be Liked or Even Loved by those lower down on the pecking order than you are” you probably wouldn’t have elicited the squeals of mock outrage.”
First of all, that is more or less what he titled it, so your joke doesn’t even make sense.
Secondly, I don’t see any outrage here, mock or otherwise, just discomfort. No one is calling for Ian’s head, just wondering why he doesn’t the patronization in the content and tone of his post.
That’ll larn ya 🙂
Winston Smith
Ian, you truly are an elitist shit. I’ve worked both sides of the fence and blue collar workers work much harder and need at least as many IQ points. You could fire 75% of the corporate and government white collar bureaucrats (assuming they were the right 75%) and only the taxpayers would notice.
Winston Smith
Ian, do you work for the government?
Stirling Newberry
It is interesting that the out of work think of themselves as belonging to another class.
markfromireland
Why yes indeed, I do think that. I’ve been treating my underlings with courtesy and consideration all my life. I’ve let them know that I value them as people and that I value the work they do for me. If they’re attacked or insulted or treated as menials I vigorously stand up for them. When a supervisor treated some of them with with bullying and disdain I fired him publicly and at the top of my voice making it perfectly clear why. Word spread and productivity soared. I know from experience that treating my underlings with courtesy and consideration has always produced the desirable result that they happily work their asses off for me doing consistently very high quality work .
mfi
V. Arnold
Ian’s about 50 years behind the times on this one.
My blue collar work life started roughly 1965 and finished about 1994, but depending how one defines blue collar it may have gone to 2004.
And yes, Ian’s out of his element here: We of the order of the “Blue Collar” learned very quickly, the duplicity of the white collar shill’s, minions, sycophants, and most of us, if not all, soon learned not to trust them.
I’ve been through the union busting, wage freezing, wage slavery, and powerless-ness, injected into the factory floors of the capitalist owners.
A smile? Bullshit, patronizing bullshit: I worked under the best and they couldn’t fool me.
You’re as wrong as 2 left shoes on this one Ian…
V. Arnold
Addendum: It hardly matters today; as the tyranny of blue collar workers has been neutralized by off shoring their “used-to-be-well-paid-jobs”; the white collar guys won in the end.
Blue collar workers are a marginalized minority now; hardly worth a mention…
Otis
One of the benefits of working in a Union shop is not having to depend on the noblesse oblige of a patronizing dick like MFI playing the White Knight. “Underlings”? That’s funny.
markfromireland
No Otis it’s accurate. “Underlings” and “juniors” are both accurate descriptions.
mfi
someofparts
I agree with Ian, speaking as a working class office mule myself, that I do my best work with managers like mfi. That said, I think it is something that, these days, most people in positions of authority don’t care about and wouldn’t know how to do if they did.
To understand the people I work for, I think of it as Chinatown. Like in the movie, where the police stay out of it because they will never be able to figure out who is who. That’s how people born to advantages seem to be with working people anymore.
alyosha
It’s basic “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, a classic I read as a teenager and watched it transform my life. The key is being genuine, if you’re not, people sooner or later will realize it.
Tom
While not exactly blue collar. For my family farm, when we have field hands over during harvest, we always cook out at our expense at the end of the day’s work for our temporary field hands during harvest and work the fields with them. It results in high productivity, morale, and they love us.
I don’t understand why other places don’t do the same. If you make people think you look out for them, they look out for you.
Mandos
Oy oy oy. This thread is fascinating. It’s like Ian threw the Apple of Eris in here.
The Tragically Flip
Ron Wilkenson’s post calls for some thought to the distinction between blue collar trades, and service jobs casually dismissed as “unskilled.”
People tend to be more courteous to skilled tradespeople. Even if you don’t like or respect the plumber, you need him/her to fix your toilet etc. It’s people like hotel maids and fast food workers who rarely get any acknowledgement as people from the privileged.
guest
I’m with the cringers in finding this advice borderline condescending. I’ve worked at or near the bottom rung all most of my career (although finally, I’ve on some better paying bottom rungs), and I was only ever a supervisor for less than a year of that time.
The thing that makes me cringe the most at this advice is the idea of all the people who will read advice like this and decide to try to engage the thankless-task grunts in friendly conversation, if not for selfish ulterior motives, then just to make themselves feel better about themselves. Thankless-task grunts may like you, especially if you are a good looking member of their preferred gender, or funny, interesting or whatever. But we/they can also find such interactions boring, fake, or an unwelcome interruption of our/their concentration. As a thankless-task grunt, I very often avoided eye contact and small talk for those reasons. Being a retail clerk or asst manager in a discount bookstore, I often found myself cornered by bored suburban housewives or retirees or self important executives on their lunch hours making me listen to their monologues that nobody else in their lives wanted to hear. Very few people have the self awareness to realize that the gift of their company is not really god’s gift to the rest of us, especially those making near the minimum wage.
That said, of course there are some folks who eat that attention up. The cleaning lady at my office seems to lap that kind of thing up from my office mates who engage her. I just try to be polite and say thanks (if I’m not on the phone) when she comes to my cubicle and I don’t try to fake anything more (I think she is a little schizophrenic).
ibaien
i think that almost this entire thread has missed the point. as part of the increasing alienation of postmodern society, we’ve completely forgotten how to be good customers – not how to bullshit and small talk, but how to genuinely interact with anyone in any service industry. we’ve raised a generation to treat servers and cashiers like automatons. if you try to act engaged out of self-interest (“do you have a good guy discount?” – ‘this american life’) you’ll come off like a smug entitled fuck and get treated accordingly. but, like ian points out, if you’re legitimately decent you’ll start seeing a lot more 10% off buttons getting pushed at the register. oh, and obviously this stuff never ever works if you take your business to mega corps – no rank and file there have any authority whatsoever to reciprocate. shop local.
Ian Welsh
The advice amounts to “treat people who are usually ignored with decency and interest and if you need a reason to do it beyond decency, note that it pays off.”
As Alyosha notes, this is identical to the advice in “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, and like it or not, it works. Now, of course, there are always people it doesn’t work with (the most alienated blue collar and service types cannot be reached this easily), but it works with many people. It’s the right thing to do morally, and it’s the right thing to do from a practical perspective as well.
Of course, if you’re THE BOSS or a senior executive, then your actual actions must match your friendliness, or like Verne, no one will be impressed.
I am no longer in the corporate world and I have no underlings. The service workers and blue collars I deal with I have no authority over. I suppose a post on how I was able to get co-workers to do shit for me they wouldn’t do for actual bosses might be in order (those methods also worked when I had formal authority.) The methods aren’t all that different, but, as noted, they involve “walking the walk”. People at my last corporate job knew that I stood up for them to senior fucking management. And I paid a price for it. But I’d do it again. And since they knew that…
Also, I spent far more of my life in shitty underling jobs than in boss or prestigious jobs.
As Mandos notes, the reactions are fascinating, however.
My other comm channels have been overall positive.
Ed S.
Ian,
When did it become controversial to treat your fellow humans with courtesy and respect? Genuine courtesy and respect? Just say hello, please, thank you. Understand that sometimes things don’t work the way YOU want them to.
Manners are the social lubricant that keeps a civilized society civilized.
Not to get all biblical (or confucian), but how, when, and why did we forget 5,000 years of common sense?
Or as I’ve taken to saying lately: what is wrong with people?
philadelaphialawyer
Ironically, it seems as if the critics of the post are being “deliberately mischaraterized.” No one is claiming that the proposition that treating people, including blue collar and service workers, well, is a good thing, is incorrect, or even “controversial.” Or denying that, on balance, such treatment is more likely to ingratiate you with most blue collar and service worker than is treating them poorly.
Rather, what is being objected to is the notion that blue collar and service workers (and, notice, the post is restricted to them) will like or love, or even think that you are “wonderful,” merely for doing so. As has been mentioned, not all blue collar and service workers are the same, but, even without that caveat, the idea seems to be here that blue collar workers are little more than dogs, and a pat on the head and the throwing of a bone, will result in, as one poster put it, “loyalty and devotion.”
Blue collar and service workers (and I have been both, as have most of my nuclear and extended family members, at one time or another in their lives), in general, are not so easily impressed. They don’t “love” you or think that you are “wonderful” merely because you treat them as fellow human beings.
Thus, it is not the “advice,” which is utterly uncontroversial, and actually rather obvious and elemental, that is being objected to, but rather the supposition that acting on that advice will win you anything more from blue collar and service workers than it would win from anyone else.
This late in the thread, after this point has been made over and over again, we still have the blogger and other posters not “getting” it. And that seems rather strange.
wendy davis
My goodness, and you’d wondered why the (alleged) ‘Bogging Left’ failed to achieve a better world (a question you’d posited some months ago) ?
This post is exactly why, as I’d said at the time. The Leftist intelligentsia has no solidarity with working people (underlings, seriously?), First Americans, or the black and brown working class slaves that serves the Higher Class Owners of the nation/world.
But yes; keep on conducting your experiment in the ease with which you can enslave ‘blue collar and service workers’, but please tip them well as a substitute for your classist disregard. You might even get a few of them to open your doors, or throw their capes onto puddles that you might cross them without dampening your shoes.
JustPlainDave
I tend to agree with ibaien. To be honest, things have slid so far into what appears to me to be the widespread belief by some classes that whole swaths of people are somehow not worth being polite to, that if it takes almost patronizing intentionality to snap people back into self awareness I might take it. I don’t want to be loved and I really, really don’t care about “not as much of a jerk as the previous white guy” discounts – I just don’t want to cringe every time I hear some asshole snarl “I want…” or “Gimme…” at the person behind the register. I want to hear “Could I please…” and know that the person behind the till is making a living wage.
Lisa
I was in hospital just recently and it s not a place to hide my transgender status…lol. But everyone treated me with respect and just basic niceness. I have to go back for a checkup on Monday and I’m taking in some chocolates for the staff in the wards I was on. Just to say thanks.
‘Thanks’, that most underused term and worth its weight in gold.
As a manager I was like MFI, followed ‘mission command’, delegated, joint planned, preferred people to volunteer for a task. Listened, said ‘thank you’ and ‘good idea’ a lot.
Praised in public…kicked in private. Protected them from other managers and my bosses. As far as I was concerned in presenting to the higher ups, all faults were mine, all praise was to them. We all took turns sharing the boring ‘hack’ work. I expected them to be responsible for themselves.
Once they had signed up for a task and had worked through an agreed plan, then it was up to them, I trusted them to let me know if they had problems or issues ASAP (and was never disappointed).
Amazing how well people will perform and enjoy their work when they are engaged and have control over what they do and actually get a chance to show what they can do. All my teams over the years moved mountains and outperformed everyone else. In one we pulled off one world first and two Australian firsts (in our field).
V. Arnold
Lisa
May 29, 2015
We seem to be in a loop of plumbing the shallows of each other’s brains.
You, MFI, and Ian have no experience (remembered) of life at the blue collar level of employment.
Spare me the platitudes of shallow dives into the real life of blue collar workers; we’re talking decades of experience; lost on the likes of you. Your’re self revelatory, anecdotal evidence has no connection to the life lived.
So, kindly shut up. You have no idea; and that’s a fact!!
You add nothing to the reality of day to day existence of the blue collar reality…
philadelaphialawyer
V. Arnold has it right.
Blue collar and service workers love their family members, and their friends. Naturally, they, in general and like most people, prefer bosses and customers who are nice to them to those who are jerks. But that hardly means that they love those bosses and customers or think that they are wonderful. And, no, being in the position of a boss or a customer does not actually reveal to you what they really think. Again, like most people, workers, on balance, repay good with good, but that does not mean that they are “loyal and devoted” to you.
S Brennan
The fact that Ian’s prescription [i.e. follow the Golden Rule, treat others as you would want to be treated] has caused such a kerfuffle amongst posters who claim to be patronized by polite behavior and who furthermore, claim to represent represent blue/pink collar workers…says more about a % of commenters than the post itself…they’re resentful, isolated people who have limited social skills.
Just last night, I was walking past the meat deli and as I waved to the lady behind the counter she called out “Hey Mr, we got some hard salami in”. I replied, “I thought you weren’t going to carry it anymore”. “Well”, she replied, “we ordered some…you know, you’re a lot more polite than most of our out-of-towners…you make an effort”.
Apparently, she hadn’t got the memo from the above commenters, that I was being “patronizing” to her?
Ian, please ignore the negative comments…all you did, was ask people to “make an effort” to be better people and point out, that doing so has rewards. I grew in a shitty family, my birthmother told me I was worthless time and again [you will believe it after enough repetition]. It took the angelic kindness of a thousand strangers to arrest the mortal plunge into which I had willing cast myself. Society’s fabric requires the strong filaments of kindness to produce a thread that withstands the hardships of the loom.
philadelphialawyer
S Brennan:
“The fact that Ian’s prescription [i.e. follow the Golden Rule, treat others as you would want to be treated] has caused such a kerfuffle amongst posters…”
It hasn’t. Your “fact” is anything but. The kerfuffle is over the notion that blue collar workers will “love” you and think that you are “wonderful” for doing so.
That is what is patronizing.
“Just last night…[etc]…”
Which proves that the deli owner “loves” you? Or believes that you are “wonderful?” I think not. You are polite, you are good customer, so she makes an effort to stock the item you like (and, by the way, that is good for her business too).
“Apparently, she hadn’t got the memo from the above commenters, that I was being ‘patronizing’ to her?”
You didn’t get the memo! The patronizing part is thinking that she loves you, rather than just responds well to politeness, and that you are wonderful, rather than just a good customer. And that her blue collar/service worker status is what makes that so.
Is that really so friggin’ hard to understand? Yes, of course, treat everyone with kindness, but don’t think that folks with blue collar or service jobs will love you for it.
“Ian, please ignore the negative comments…all you did, was ask people to ‘make an effort’ to be better people and point out, that doing so has rewards.”
If that was all he had done, the would have been many fewer negative comments. Most of the negative comments are about the “love” and “wonderful” stuff, not about the advisability and rewards of making an effort stuff.
S Brennan
Hey Phillalaw, you’re an effing lawyer, nobody is gonna love your ass…even if you tried…and you’re too lazy for that…that’s why you choose THE welfare profession.
I’m not going to respond to you’re bullshit in the comment above, that’s what you do for a living.
But let’s be clear, Lawyers are the ultimate government sponges, everybody else has to pay taxes for to fund the courts, so that prancing sociopaths can talk shit instead of producing anything of value. Lawyers are the first/last word in Welfare bums.
It must fry your ass that being nice gets people’s favors, since your piss and vinegar earns you nothing but derisive scowls. Too bad, go sulk you hollow soul.
philadelphialawyer
S Brennan:
WTF? How do I possibly deserve that response?
And, as for being lazy, what could possibly be more lazy than your refusal to respond to my completely fair and reasonable post? I disagree with you, politely and respectfully, and this is your reaction?
Funny how some folks claim to be all about the politeness, but if met with anything other than fawning agreement, resort immediately to nasty, personal insults.
“It must fry your ass that being nice gets people’s favors, since your piss and vinegar earns you nothing but derisive scowls. Too bad, go sulk you hollow soul.”
What a croc! As I said, of course being nice gets you better treatment. And, no, it not only does not fry my ass, but I do it myself. I was taught to be polite to everyone, and always try to be. And that does sometimes result in my getting favors. I just don’t think that because a person does me a favor it means that they love me.
Erin Gannon
I’m actually curious as to what precipitated the writing of this post. Was it an incident at the coffee shop? An experience witnessing a friend be rude to a liquor store clerk?
I’ll wager some background or context on the post would go far in reconciling the warring factions* in the comments thread.
* This is intended as a good-natured vibe.
Peter
I wonder what deep need draws out these Leisure Class confessionals but they do remind me of that old Phil Ochs tune, ‘Love Me I’m A Liberal’.
Lisa
V Arnold: “You, MFI, and Ian have no experience (remembered) of life at the blue collar level of employment.”. Really? I deliberately didn’t mention my background or what I have been employed at over my decades of life.
So I wouldn’t be too quick to judge without knowing all the facts.
After all not everyone grows up a tennement block, two adults and two children in a ‘room and kitchen’ (no bath or shower of course) and having to put shillings into the electricity meter to have power. Heck I even remember whoever getting up first having to put the coal fire on to have any heating…in winter…in Scotland….lol.
‘Working class’? I remember poverty and nearly everyone I knew was just as poor ( I did know a few middle class kids at school and being amazed at the all the room they had…and a bath that wasn’t tin that you pulled out of a cupboard and filled from kettles).
“So, kindly shut up. You have no idea; and that’s a fact!!”. If you are a non-black American I’d rebound that one right back to you given that you probably, by my standards, grew up in total luxury.
Ian Welsh
Ah? I worked construction, I was a bike courier, I worked minimum wage service jobs, I worked as a mover. I’ve been minimum wage security and I’ve worked the phone banks as a telefundraiser. I’ve done farm work, and even worked on a fishing boat. And many other similar jobs. (Never worked as a logger, but my father was a forester and I’ve known plenty.)
Got out of the labor side of that stuff in my late twenties because of severe illness that hurt my body in ways that made it impossible to do sustained manual labor.
If you mean I’ve never worked in a factory, yeah. But I’ve worked plenty of shit jobs.
Ian Welsh
Ah yes, my mother used to have to feed the heating meter in post-WWII England. Horrid. No wonder she preferred to go overseas.
V. Arnold
Lisa
May 29, 2015
First, let me apologise for my rude response in telling you to shut up. That was wrong as 2 left shoes.
Poverty in and of itself isn’t the point; but attitude towards one’s assumed position based of the color of the collar is.
@ Ian
Yeah, I fished on a commercial salmon troller off the Oregon coast back in the late seventies and worked in the woods as well.
I think you probably had good intensions but stated your case very poorly IMO.
Class warfare is alive and well in todays North America. Hell, always has been in my life time. I resent it because most people could not have done the incredibly high tolerance manufacturing I did by hand, no computers. And not given that I might have been a smart guy. Any hoo, it’s a moot point at this juncture…
Monster from the Id
“Welcome back, my friends/To the show that never ends/We’re so glad you could attend/Come inside, come inside” 😆
http://s26.postimg.org/bc0o5xa55/Dedication_Wrong_on_Internet_MP.jpg
capelin
ian’s post was phrased a little awkwardly i thought, but i totally agree with it.
“if you want to know how people really are, observe how they treat people with less power than themselves.”
the rich are cheap.