GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #743: THE POWER OF NO

 

There's this odd feeling in the world. Or maybe it's just the US. I can only speak for my own country, but the more I think about it, the more I think it is an American feeling. When you're looking to do business with a company, you expect them to bend over backwards for your money. So even if that company does not do the work you want them to do, you expect them to do it anyway.

This feeling is, of course, dead wrong. But that doesn't stop that feeling, does it?

Here, I'll give you an example. Say you went to McDonald's for dinner, but you have a taste for steak. When you get up to the counter (or, God forbid, the fucking drive through), you decide to order steak even though it is not now, nor has ever been, on the menu. And then you get angry when they say they don't do that. You insist that they make you a steak despite the gathering line behind you.

You are dead wrong.

One of the good things about my current job is, if we don't do a service, we don't do it. Period. End of sentence. This sentence you are reading right now of further denial is redundant.

And it never ceases to amaze me how angry it makes people. They'll call in and tell us the service they want. We tell them no. They now demand it instead. We tell them no again. They double down. They'll say such-and-such competitor does it. We tell them no again. How can that be, they ask, that you don't do this thing I need? We just don't do it. FINE! I'LL TAKE MY BUSINESS ELSEWHERE! Ah yes, the business that we would have never taken in the first place. Yes, take wing, my padawan, and go to that competitor you're gushing about.

It turns out that I love telling people no. Telling people no is so satisfying it's almost sexual in nature.

I'm not needlessly cruel. If they accept my first no, then good. We're on the same page. We need torment each other no further. However, if they don't accept that no, and they double down, triple down, quadruple down, then my pleasure begins. Take a look at that picture of Bugs Bunny up there. That is exactly how I feel when I'm talking to such a person. It's a shitty job, so I have to take joy wherever I can get it, however I can get it.

No is a great word. No is a gratifying word. No is a magical word.

People should say it more often.