How to Make Rude People Lose Their Minds
What is wrong with people these days? Since when did being rude not only become acceptable but it seems to have become the norm.
Road rage. Uncouth manners. Snappy remarks. Abrupt and curt conversations. Mean comments. Profanity-laced tirades on the phone. It’s disappointing and painful. The worst part is rude behavior can bring out ugly things inside of us and the next thing you know, we’re being rude too. It has to stop somewhere. You may as well be the first one to try to stop it. If we don’t put a halt to it, pretty soon we’ll be on a beach looking at a half-buried Statue of Liberty screaming “We finally really did it. YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP! OH, DAMN YOU! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!“*
Allow me to offer a few examples of the kind of behavior I’m talking about before I give you a solution that will absolutely melt the brains of the rude offenders:
– A procurement guy hung up on me during a phone call on which we were discussing a contract. Seriously. <CLICK>. Gone. When I called him back and said “I think we got disconnected” he replied “No. I hung up on you. I didn’t like what you were offering us.” Note: we were in contract negotiations at the time – it wasn’t a sales cold call or anything like that.
– I had a sales guy cold call me. I listened to his initial pitch. I told him “thanks but I’m not interested.” He did his obligatory “overcome objections” script. I again said “thank you but I’m not interested.” His response was “Fine.” <CLICK>
– I had a colleague tell someone they wouldn’t be able to give him exactly what he wanted and the recipient of the news responded with F-bombs like he was flying a B17 over Dresden.
All of these rude responses were uncalled for and disproportionate relative to the “offenses” that provoked them. On top of that, they were mean, childish, and unprofessional. The good news is, there’s an easy way to get back at these rude folks and make them go completely berserk.
There’s only one thing you have to do: be nice. Be incredibly, unbelievably nice. It makes them insane.
I learned this one from my Dad. We were driving into New York when I was a kid and Dad went to merge into a lane of cars at the tollbooth (this was before EZ Pass). It was an alternate merge and it was Dad’s turn yet the guy who was supposed to let him merge wouldn’t let him in. My Dad gestured asking if he could get in (no, not that gesture). The guy screamed out his window at Dad: “YOUR MOTHER!” Dad giggled and smiled. Again, “YOUR MOTHER!” Dad blew a kiss. “YOUR MOTHER!” The guy was turning red and his vocabulary apparently became limited to two words that actually made no sense in the situation. The redder he got and the more he screamed “YOUR MOTHER!” the more Dad giggled, smiled, waved, and blew kisses. I thought the guy was going to stroke out. After the encounter, Dad said “Always be nice. It makes them crazy.”
Now, besides making rude people go crazy (which is a nice benefit of this approach), there are more important benefits to taking the high road:
– People will be able to easily contrast who’s being rude with who’s being nice. Each of those people will in turn attract more of the same into their careers and their lives.
– By being nice, perhaps you turn that other person’s day around (or at least get them to not be rude to the next person). Hopefully a positive chain of events follows.
– As a leader, your words and actions set the culture for your organization. If you want nice people being nice to your customers so you can make a nice profit and have a nice retirement plan, you should probably be nice.
– You’ll feel better about yourself when you’re nice. It’ll help ward off stress, depression, angst, and all sorts of other bad things. Life is way too short to go through it mad and rude.
So the next time someone is doing the equivalent of screaming “YOUR MOTHER!” at you, take a breath, smile, and blow a kiss. Because if we don’t start changing things soon, I’m afraid our society will be doomed to be run by apes.
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
*Charleton Heston’s final line in Planet of the Apes when he realizes mankind went crazy and finally destroyed itself.
Photo: alg_angry_driver by John Greenfield
Mike: Thanks for the blog post to remind us not to fall into the rudeness trap. As tempting as it to snap back at rudeness, taking the high road of kindness is the much better route. I like how I feel about myself after the deep-breath-kindness-response much better than the lash-out response! I’d say that 75% of the time I remember to take a deep breath and smile…but I’m working at getting that number higher! Cheeers :)
Mike: You are so CORRECT. Standing behind an Rx counter, dispensing a product they don’t want, and then incurring their wrath when I tell them the cost (or maybe their co-pay). It was not easy, but kindness always worked !!!Often it caught them off guard because they were looking for an argument. I kept many a customer with KINDNESS.
Mike, I heard a version of this from, of all people, an attorney. He said, “Always be the reasonable party.” It was advice I’ve never forgotten. And you’re right — it drives ’em crazy.
Kindness and politeness creates almost instant insanity in a rude person. They are not able to adapt to a polite reply and try to comprehend why someone is being polite to them when they are so angry they could spit nails. I tell my desk associates to treat everyone politely and I do the same. The rudeness does not necessarily stop but it becomes comical to see the reactions. Amazing what a bottle of water and a Special K snack bar can do to a rude person.
Very good advice yet Hard when the people who are constantly passing remarks in ones direction are more educated Better positioned socially Earning more and they should be higher up the evolutionary scale
I totally agree with you. A burning tree doesn’t need fuel to stop. It needs water! Be kind. Do what is respectable. A kind act will have its impact if not simultaneously, after a while. We should not turn to apes…sure. :)
Mike~ So very true…For some reason it seems as though society is accepting of rudeness. Some of the things people post of social media websites..( Facebook, twitter etc) are incredibly rude, yet they are very proud of their comments. I just don’t understand it!
What ever happened to “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all!”