“Oh no,” I thought. “It’s him again.”
I was looking out the window watching the repairman come up our driveway. I have one of those insurance contracts with our local utility company that covers just about everything in the house, and have found it to be very valuable but, as with most things, not without its hiccups.
And one of my hiccups was walking up the front steps. A few months ago, I’d called the company to come fix my heating system. Now, let’s give a brief overview here as it will be pertinent later on. Our thermostat (like most, I assume) has two main switches. The first switch has two options: “on” (running no matter what the temperature) and “auto,” running only if above or below the desired temp. The second has three: cool, off (the system is shut off completely) or heat.
While I can’t remember the exact nuances of the heating system problem, I know there were a few scenarios I wanted to explain to the repairman (let’s call him Ed) when he got to my house. I’m sure it went something like this.
“When the system is ‘on,’ it runs, but there’s no heat. When it’s on ‘auto,’ it doesn’t stop when it hits the desired temperature. The other day … ” With that he cut me off, apparently tired of my chatter.
Ed asked one or two questions and began working. I, for my part, was quite frustrated I had not been heard out. It would only take a few minutes to describe the problem, and perhaps something in what I was going to say would have helped him diagnose it. Anyway, eventually he finished, leaving me with a less than customer-satisfied feeling.
Fast forward to this week and my AC is not working, with temps in the ’90s. My salvation for coolness, Ed, comes into view. And what are the first thoughts that come into my mind? “What can I remember about Ed that’s going to help me deal better with him?”
By the time he hit the door, I was ready to be damn succinct, decidedly unchatty, and nowhere near the man while he was working. Some service folks like to talk — Ed, not so much.
“So you’ve got a problem with your AC?” Ed asked.
“Yup,” I answered, with the brevity of one conversing in their fourth language.
“Ok, let’s take a look,” Ed said, as he started to work.
And so he worked and so it went, and as he did I tried to keep the kids away from him. At one point, Ed and my 5-year-old son Parker crossed paths, with the boy still in his Batman pajamas. I watched Ed’s face as they passed each other and Ed didn’t event cast a glance down. The man was quite the cold fish.
And so, having some inkling of his nature based on our first experience, I was able to adjust my approach in our second, and things went much smoother.
To some of you, my fluidity of manner may seem phony. “I am what I am,” you say, “and those who don’t like it be damned.” And that is certainly one way to go.
But I am just about always of the mind that thinks: “What is my objective in this encounter?” And to act in a way most likely to attain it.
I can remember one time when I didn’t. A few years ago, when we’d just moved into our house, the Verizon FIOS installation guy and I got into it. He thought the wiring I wanted him to do was beyond his duties (“You want me to do another room?!”), while I wanted what I wanted. It got heated and I almost threw him out. A few weeks later, when I went to plug one of the Ethernet wires he’d run into my laptop, the connection didn’t fit.
Later, as another guy from Verizon was looking at the connector, he started laughing in disbelief.
“I don’t know what the hell he was doing with this,” he said.
And at that point I knew my nemesis had his revenge.
Does anyone advise you to manage all your reports the same way? No, and nobody thinks you are phony for being a little tougher with Sally than with Jim because that seems to be what works. So the next time you wish you could just be yourself, remember that sometimes the objective isn’t to be a paragon of authenticity but rather in harmony with your interlocutor, especially if you really want your AC fixed.
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