last week, despite several folks telling me that it was unwise to pursue the idea, i posted a blog entry that people could enter for the purpose of sorting out grievances. in the rapid-fire series of exchanges, i inadvertently offended copsunited. having reviewed what happened, i think i can now see how that happened.
copsunited: i won’t use your initials, as given what’s happened, that implies a kind of informality that perhaps isn’t appropriate. i apologize for giving offense. it was utterly unintentional.
as a rule, i try to conduct myself courteously online. i do this mainly b/c the point of being online is to communicate, and it’s very easy to miscommunicate online—heck, as i keep re-learning w/ one friend, it’s even easy to do off-line. i find therefore that being courteous is generally the best way to minimize miscommunications. i deal w/ enough of that sort of thing professionally: i don’t want to have to deal w/ it in my recreation.
and that isn’t merely true online, either. i find that as a rule, i can get better results by being conciliatory than by being adversarial. it doesn’t really matter what medium you use to communicate: you’re still communicating w/ a person, after all, and people prefer to be treated w/ respect.
this touches on something that i’ve discussed ad infinitum at my former online addiction: an online forum at which we often discuss matters of politics. on that forum are a number of libertarians. i’ll address libertarianism more fully in a future installment, but the salient part is that as a rule, libertarians want the government involved as little as possible, preferring that private enterprise fill such roles. where i think libertarians go wrong however is trusting that private enterprise is necessarily superior to public enterprise (government).
libertarians argue that in any marketplace, a company has a duty to behave, b/c consumers will learn of corporate malfeasance or bad behavior and punish the company by not buying its product/services. IOW: as long as companies are courteous, they will prosper. on the face of it, this concept seems self-evident for most folks.
the problem w/ this idea is that it depends upon corporate misbehavior necessarily being something that consumers will learn, or in some cases, possess sufficient understanding to appreciate fully. for example, there is a company (the SCO group) that practices what’s known in legal circles as “patent barratry”—they claim to own intellectual property, then file lawsuit after lawsuit for questionable (and that’s putting it mildly) violations of “their” property rights by so doing. the SCO group was a listed company (american stock exchange) and had no products or services: its business model was entirely income through legal thuggery (as one might think the RIAA’s is). they were finally delisted b/c they finally got stupid enough to attack IBM, whereupon IBM proceeded to obliterate them. IBM doesn’t exactly have shallow pockets and they own such an insanely large number of patents that they finally buried the SCO group in the course of due diligence.
the SCO group existed solely to feed parasitically from other companies: they provided no services and they offered no products. this means they must have had reasonably intelligent people willing to give them money to start the business. they were in operation for several years and they obviously had investors when they were listed. but the SCO group is evidence, i think, that we cannot always trust market forces to exact the power of censure.
after all, the SCO group’s thuggery was only stopped by IBM, one of the most prestigious companies in the world, acting through legal channels. IOW: through the power of government.
and to bring it all together: the SCO group is perhaps proof that if one’s business model is dependent upon being a thug, then maybe that isn’t the best way to get ahead in business. it pretty clearly isn't in life, either.
so does courtesy usually yield the best results in your experience? does something else work better for you? comment and let me know.
ed
silverwhisper posted on Dec 05, 2006
| views: 415
Comments
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PAPERBACKWRITER said on Dec 05, 2006....
I´m begging your pardon Ed; another day when you would love to read everyone - alas time fleets oh so quickly. Therefore, please indulge my humble soul when I resort to the 21st century virtual earmarking.
Warm regards,
Paper~
P.S.
Hope my courteousness works. I hate being the first commenter : (
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FaithfulDisciple said on Dec 05, 2006....
Courtesy is the first step towards open communication. In initial contact, courtesy is shown with a smile or a gesture of respect and greeting. People who are courteous usually end up making more friends than discourteous ones.
Tactlessness is the opposite of courtesy, which is usually done in purpose to offend without regard for the feelings of others. When a person is courteous to others, it shows his respect for the rights of others and reflects his well mannered culture.
In conversations, I usually avoid discourteous ones, since no one has a right to show disrespect to others unless it was a reactionary thing initiated by the offender to the reactor.
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secretlife said on Dec 05, 2006....
courtesy is severely under-rated in today's world. i'm often shocked by my kid's friends who seem to be totally lacking in simple common courtesy, and make it a point to bring up specific examples to my children in the hope that when they go to other people's houses, they show basic common courtesy. Let me share one example. My 16 yr old had 6 friends here a few weeks ago. The first to arrive was a girl I'd never met before. She rang my front doorbell, and I answered it. Instead of saying hello, i'm so-and-so, she walked past me into my home and said, 'where's M*?" She totally missed it when I said, "hi, I'm SL, and you are?"....because M* had appeared on the staircase and called her upstairs. Need I mention that she didn't bother with thank-you for having me's when she left? The next day I said to my daughter, "Gee, I hope that when you go to someone's home, you show some common courtesy by introducing yourself. And I hope you never forget to say thank you." -
silverwhisper said on Dec 05, 2006....
paper: why do you hate being the first commenter? don't be daft: you're a whole 6 hours earlier than most of the people who comment on my stuff. :>
FD: as always, it's good to see you again. :>
SL: good grief, that's just plain revolting.
ed -
PAPERBACKWRITER said on Dec 05, 2006....
Silver: lol, I said the same thing today to an Irish friend, re: don´t be daft. Sorry, I have been earmarking all over the place. I can´t keep up with everyone. Is there an SC vitamin for sale, anywhere? All I wan´t for Christmas..... -
bloc said on Dec 05, 2006....
SCO is a great example for libertarians, but seems an odd tangent on the subject of being courteous :) I'm guessing there are a few millionaires as a direct result of SCO even if the business goes under in the long run. -
secretlife said on Dec 05, 2006....
yes ed, i told my daughter that some of her friends are 'socially retarded'... -
silverwhisper said on Dec 05, 2006....
paper: "daft", i understand, is a particularly favored word in the irish vocabulary.
bloc: w/out studying the financials it would be hard to say, but if there were any, i'm sure they're being investigated for insider trading. yeah, a weird tangent to be sure, but this is what happens when i blog when undercaffeinated... :>
SL: what would the kid have done had you stood your ground and not let her into your home?!
ed -
bloc said on Dec 05, 2006....
@sw
not counting stocks I'm sure a good number of them were making 100's of k per year.
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bloc said on Dec 05, 2006....
@sl I think a lot of kids are simply uncomfortable in social situations with adults. Not being mature they simply avoid social interaction with the adults as much as they can :) -
BombShell said on Dec 05, 2006....
I was tempted to earmark as well because i'm supposed to be working, but what the heck.... I grew up in a physically and verbially abusive home, and until I was in my late teens, I resorted to the same. In the last decade, I've matured and had better examples in my life and now follow the addage that "it's easier to attract flies with honey than with vinegar". I can list a year's worth of examples how I've bit my tongue (or keyboard) and remembered to treat people with respect and compromise. -
missb said on Dec 05, 2006....
Hey Ed, I too am marking this. Too tired right now :/ Cheers :) -
JadeLondon said on Dec 05, 2006....
Silver, I tend to agree with you about common courtesy, but by the same token, it doesn't necessarily fix a company's problems.I do feel that people do not seem to be polite anymore. Sometimes, a customer will comment on how nice I am. Depending on my mood, I might respond (with laughter), "Would you rather have me be rude?" Or even, "It is part of the job."
And kids these days! They scare the hell out of me. I hope my children do not adopt those sort of habits, or I will pull my hair out. Geez, I sound so old! **sigh**
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gingersoul said on Dec 05, 2006....
Bloc, i am sorry to disagree but kids are the way parents shape them. No excuses here. Its not a lack of interaction with adults that makes them rude, its the way adults show them how to interact that make them good mannered or bad mannered kids.
Yes, they can be nice kids and get lost during their frequentations with the too many freaks generated by parents lacking any value and consideraration for the common civil behavior...but if the parents give them solid grounds they at least know how to behave...I hate rude people. And more, i hate rude parents childbearing rude kids. The idea that some of them will get in contact with my daughter gives me the creeps...:-)
Fact is people should have a license to generate. And another one to show they know the basic rule of a decent behavior toward others.
Jade, we are not old because we complain about hem. These kids are really horrible, more and more. But everything come down to the parents, and the lack of values and priorities.Secret..i would have stopped that girl and told her "First of all i told you hello. Good manner is saying hello back. Second , if you dont tell me who you are you are not going to see anybody". Then enjoy her reaction..:-0
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bloc said on Dec 05, 2006....
@gingersoul
it certainly plays a role, but i'm certain it isn't that black and white. I was a very very very shy child/teenager and didn't like talking to people I didn't know especially if they were an adult. No amount of lessons from my parents would have made me less shy.
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Lioness said on Dec 05, 2006....
Treat others the way you want others treat you. Courtesy is a very important value that must be upheld, it always works. I was once berated by my friend's older sister over the phone simply because my friend fabricated stories that put the blame on me, instead of her. The sister kept telling me mean words, accusing me of being a bitch, when we have'nt even met. After her rant, I told her "you have no right to say that to me because you don't know me". It took so much effort to stay cool after such hurtful words. But I'm glad I did that. Because I made her feel ashamed of what she did, being an educated and matured person that she is.
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gingersoul said on Dec 05, 2006....
Bloc...i agree with you but that girl Secret is talking about is not a shy one...she is simply rude one....i bet Secret is able to sort between a shy kid and a simply rude one.
....some shy kids might look rude, but the plainly rude ones are easily spotted.
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secretlife said on Dec 05, 2006....
You know what, I really did think the girl just didn't know how to deal with adults. She never made eye contact with me, so i assumed that she was already intimidated by me. So bloc has a point-- Still I did use it as a lesson for my daughter, who I know, and who I know is not shy. It's really awkward being a teenager....I remember that much. -
BlogObsessed said on Dec 05, 2006....
Ed - an interesting post following upon the heels of one recently about swearing (fuck - can't remember whose blog!).....but seriously...we swear more these days, I guess, but interestingly, I don't think that necessarily equates with being discourteous. Sorry - going off on a tangent here a wee bit (wee being from the same part of the world as daft!) My point is, so telling in SL's example, that we are becoming, I think, an increasingly discourteous society. Where does it begin? Hard to say. SL's example reminds me that kids today often call adults by their first names which breaks down the "respect" thing. I am "guilty" of perpetuating this by having my students call me by my first name (they are college age). Is there a connection? Maybe. (Sorry for rambling - off to bed!). -
CreativeWoman said on Dec 05, 2006....
There's this old saying, "You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar." My parents always used to say that to remind us of our manners.
I always try to be courteous. If I visit a business establishment that treats me rudely, I don't go back.
CW
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moonriver said on Dec 05, 2006....
moonriver confucius say: sw on right track. corporate example nicely chosen, since courtesy among corporations as common as honor among thieves. courtesy like tea drinking ritual. you gulp tea like man on desert dying of thirst, you forget essence of tea. me think give sw 6 kowtows, but me overdo it to 12 kowtows as sign of high respect.
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hotaka said on Dec 06, 2006....
As I get older I realize more and more how important the things my parents taught me are in today's world. My friends' mothers always commented on how courteous I was and today in Japan many older people comment on the politness of my Japanese, saying I speak better than many people because of my manners (and not my grammar). When I was visiting Denmark a few years ago (I speak some Danish as well), I also heard how nice and polite my Danish was. As a child my mother always enforced the use of polite language and courtesy. As a rule I try to speak to people politely and courteously because I can see that it makes people happy and willing to listen to my requests. Rude behaviour, disrespect, and inconsideration only make people grumpy and frustrated, especially if they have to deal with that kind of behaviour at work. Some store clerks who see me on a regular basis have even commented to me about the rudeness of some customers and they are pleased to see me because I treat them with respect. I write this not to boast about my good manners but to say that my mother was right to raise me this way and that making a small effort to be courteous creates a happier atmosphere in any environment. I try to keep these things in mind when I comment here on SC, though at times I may seem the opposite.
Of course, one of my biggest pet peeves is people who are completely ignorant of courtesy and behave as though they are the only important person in the world. That kind of attitude makes me upset and invites a spray from my hidden venom.secretlife - Kids these days, eh? Who is raising them to behave like this? Ah, yes. It's the TV, isn't it?
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missb said on Dec 06, 2006....
I agree that courtesy usually yields the best results and that's how I do it. Of course some natural born assholes sometimes see courtesy as weakness and they tend to do the contrary. I am quite a courteous person but i can change in a snap when the other person does not show me the same initial respect i gave.
Cheers ;) -
silverwhisper said on Dec 06, 2006....
bloc: you're speaking of insiders (whose divestiture is disclosed by SEC regulation)? and i too was once very shy, myself. and good point re: the kid.
bombshell: that adage has served me well over the years. :>
miss b: it looks like yet again, we're in agreement. we better stop--people will talk! :D
jade: i'm not saying it fixes a company's problems. what i'm saying is that treating people w/ courtesy when extended to businesses also makes good business sense.
blogo: hey, it's a comment to a freaking blog, and believe me, i do a fair bit of rambling myself. :D
CW: yep, me too.
moon: precisely--businesses don't really like to behave that way b/c it makes them appear weak.
hotaka: i get the same reaction when i speak in my parents' native tongue!
ed
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