She has worked in various service roles over the years, both as a customer service representative and as a store / site manager, and she has a real eye for these things. We were waiting in line at a lab, and all of the employees were miserable. They seemed to hate their jobs, and the customers seemed to hate being there as well. Not a smile in the room.
In these situations, it's difficult to tell where the problem starts. Were all the customers so rude that the employees started hating their jobs, or are the employees so rude that the customers hate being there? It's a chicken and egg paradox, but the thing that is certain is that each side feeds off the other. One side's discontent feeds the other's and vice versa. It's a vicious circle.
But my wife has this great trick - she smiles anyways. She is really nice even if the person on the other side of the transaction is rude and clearly not having it. She asks them how their day is going. She finds pleasant conversation. She sympathizes with their situation when it's appropriate. There isn't always a response, but many times - possibly most times - there's an overwhelming and positive change. The vicious cycle is replaced with a virtuous one, where everyone is pleasant and helpful.
Just a couple weeks after I learned this lesson, I had the chance to put it into practice myself. I had a routine doctor's appointment at a practice with terrible reviews. When you read the comments online, the doctor himself is generally praised but practically every review refers to the support staff as either rude, unprofessional, impatient or disrespectful.
From the moment I walked into the office, the reviews were confirmed. The staff did not smile at all, they were short with all of the customers and acted talked like a kindergarten teacher would towards a kid in timeout.
But I tried my wife's trick. I smiled. I said "good morning!" to everyone. I asked them how their day was going. I commented that they must be bored of listening to the same 10 songs that the Christmas channel plays. And you know what? They were really nice! The same people that were universally derided in the online reviews smiled, helped me through the forms and even went out of their way to give me some suggestions on how to best handle the insurance transactions. They were a joy to work with.
Sometimes, when you browse reviews on sites like Yelp and Trip Advisor, you'll realize that there's a subset of the population that go to restaurants, bars, gyms, and all kinds of institutions looking for a fight. They usually find it. They have haughty expectations and harbor suspicions of subpar service that they'd like to have confirmed. We all like to feel outraged on some level, because it usually comes with another feeling that can feel very good - vindication. If you look for vindication, and you harbor suspicions that others want to wrong you, then you may find that you have a knack for finding exactly that.
But the opposite can also be true. You can look for the good in others1, and you know what, you may find that too. So, smile more. It could just be that after I left that doctors office, the staff members were nicer to the next customer, and that she was nicer to the waiter at dinner, who was in turn nicer to the people at the table next to her. It may be the thing you do each day that has the biggest impact on the world as a whole, and it doesn't cost anything.
1 In the recent passing of George H.W. Bush, his son's eulogy had this great line. He said "He [George H.W. Bush] looked for the good in each person, and he usually found it". ↩
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