Tag: Other People

Public vs Private Voice – Examples of

Paris Hilton’s voice change
by u/snoo-apple in popculturechat

firstgirlonmars
Me when I worked in customer service

Hedgehogwash
I become approximately 25% more southern whenever I have to call a stranger, I don’t know why.

PrettyPossum420
Same! I also found myself doing it a lot in the service industry. The thickness of the accent would increase in proportion to just how mean the customer was. Particularly nasty customers could get me sounding like Forrest Gump real quick.

PrettyPeaceful
Yes! When I worked in customer service I would go the opposite direction and lower my voice when I talked to older people. Louder and lower was easier for many elderly people with hearing loss. My coworkers would say “you’re using your old person voice.”

parley65
OMG!! When I was a junior in high school one of my friends said something like, “I didn’t know your mom was British!! Why didn’t you tell us?”

I had no idea what the hell was happening. Apparently she was answered the phone with an accent and I had to explain that she was from Georgia and just nuts. She also used to do a soft shoe tap routine for my friends. (No, she couldn’t tap, she just put salt on the floor and faked it). Gosh I miss her.

Thank you kind stranger for reminding me.

The Incalculable Value of Peripheral Connections

In Placerville, Calif., David Turoff, 72, a veterinarian, chats with his mail carrier and UPS deliveryman, and sometimes drops in on the mechanic who repairs his truck just to say hello or leave a gift of firewood. “They make me feel good,” Mr. Turoff said of such brief interactions. “I like having connections with people.”

Toby Gould’s day begins with a 7 a.m. visit to Chez Antoine, a bakery and coffee shop in Hyannis, Mass. Mr. Gould, 77, a retired minister, buys a takeout latte and speaks French, haltingly, with the Belgian proprietor, who bestows a slice of ham on Mr. Gould’s Australian shepherd, Layla. If the shop closed, “it would leave a hole in my life,” Mr. Gould said.

They May Be Just Acquaintances. They’re Important to You Anyway.
The people at the dog park, the bank teller, the regular waiter — these casual relationships may be “weak ties,” but they’re also a key to well-being.
Paula Span

From the comments:

Nancy
My friend and I ate pizza together every Friday at a local restaurant. The man behind the counter knew our orders and always chatted a bit with us every week. A couple of Fridays ago, we walked up to the door and it was locked, with a handwritten “Closed” sign. It closed permanently. We were so sad. What happened to our guy? Did he get another job? We miss going there and seeing all the regulars. We had to start all over at a new pizza place

barbara
This article really resonates for me. My husband and I had lived in the same neighborhood for 30 years and when he died, I discovered that I had to break the news to many of his “weak ties.” Some of them had known us as a couple and so naturally asked about his absence, but others were people he had interacted with alone – the dry cleaners, the man who repaired his watches etc. Many knew his name but others did not, and yet every one of them had something to say about him and often a story to tell. They had also observed us as a couple over the years and offered their impressions of our relationship. (You are never invisible in a neighborhood!) Discovering that he had left a small gap in so many people’s lives helped me immeasurably in coping with the huge gap he had left in mine.

Been There Experienced That
While I was having radiation therapy, I struck up a relationship with the bus driver and a passenger. When I came to the end of the treatment, I told them why I had been riding and that this was my last ride. Both cheered me when I got off the bus. It felt very good.

Non-complementary Behaviour and The Sermon on the Mount

It reminded me of the clichéd lessons I heard at church as a kid. Like the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5: You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

Sure, you think. Swell plan, Jesus–if we were all saints. Problem is: we’re all too human. And in the real world, turning the other cheek is about the most naive thing you can do. Right?

Only recently did I realise Jesus was advocating a quite rational principle. Modern psychologists call it non-complementary behaviour. Most of the time, as I mentioned earlier, we humans mirror each other. Someone gives you a compliment, you’re quick to return the favour. Somebody says something unpleasant, and you feel the urge to make a snide comeback. In earlier chapters we saw how powerful these positive and negative feedback loops can become in schools and companies and democracies.

When you’re treated with kindness, it’s easy to do the right thing. Easy, but not enough. To quote Jesus again, ‘If you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?’

Humankind
Rutger Bregman

The Burden of Someone Else’s Dream

When we lived in England my days had a familiar rhythm. Each morning, my mother flung open the curtains in my room, and I tugged my school jumper over my head and pulled on my skirt before tumbling downstairs to eat cereal with my younger brother Jon. After school, we’d play on the swing in our garden, or crouch at the far end of the stream to watch dragonflies hovering above the gold-green surface.

I was used to this rhythm; I liked it and thought it would never change. Until one morning over breakfast, my father announced that we were going to sail around the world.

I paused, a spoonful of cornflakes halfway to my mouth.

“We’re going to follow Captain Cook,” Dad said. “After all, we share the captain’s surname, so who better to do it?” He picked up his cigarette and leaned back in his seat.

“Are you joking?” I asked.

Next to me, Jon watched Dad, his lips parted.

“Not at all,” said my father, puffing out a cloud of smoke. “I’m deadly serious.”

“But why?”

“Well, someone needs to mark the 200th anniversary of Cook’s third voyage, don’t they?” he said, raising his eyebrows at my mother.

“Of course they do, Gordon,” said Mum, returning his smile.

‘Dad said: We’re going to follow Captain Cook’: how an endless round-the-world voyage stole my childhood
In 1976, Suzanne Heywood’s father decided to take the family on a three-year sailing ‘adventure’ – and then just kept going. It was a journey into fear, isolation and danger …

This is an excerpt from the book:
Wavewalker: Breaking Free
by Suzanne Heywood

Other People – A Parable

A rich Hollywood agent’s Ferrari breaks down in the desert outside Los Angeles. This is terrible; he’s got the biggest meeting of his life scheduled for later that day. His phone is dead, and there’s nobody in sight. But wait: off in the distance, a vehicle approaches. As it gets closer, he sees that it’s a pickup truck. An old, beat-up pickup truck. Of the kind driven by farmers. Oh, God. Conservative farmers, who see a guy like him (Ferrari, beautiful suit, tons of hair product) and assume he must be rolling in money and does no real work, like, you know, farm work, out in the broiling sun, wrestling cows or whatnot. A punk rich kid, making all that money for what? Talking people into things! What a faker! Jeez, just his luck, the agent thinks, of all the people in the world who might have come along to help, he gets this guy? What does that stupid hick know about his life, about how hard he’s worked all these years? Zeke or Clem or whoever’s probably got a nice stable marriage, to some old farmer lady, whereas Jeannine left him last month because of all the long hours he spends agenting and now he hardly ever sees little Rex and –
The truck pulls up. “Need a lift?” asks the kindly farmer.
“Fuck you!” shouts the agent.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
George Saunders

Tips for Negotiation

Don’t try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Aggressive confrontation is the enemy of constructive negotiation.

​Avoid questions that can be answered with “Yes” or tiny pieces of information. These require little thought and inspire the human need for reciprocity; you will be expected to give something back.

Ask calibrated questions that start with the words “How” or “What.” By implicitly asking the other party for help, these questions will give your counterpart an illusion of control and will inspire them to speak at length, revealing important information.

Don’t ask questions that start with “Why” unless you want your counterpart to defend a goal that serves you. “Why” is always an accusation, in any language.

​Calibrate your questions to point your counterpart toward solving your problem. This will encourage them to expend their energy on devising a solution.

Bite your tongue. When you’re attacked in a negotiation, pause and avoid angry emotional reactions. Instead, ask your counterpart a calibrated question.

​There is always a team on the other side. If you are not influencing those behind the table, you are vulnerable.

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
Voss, Chris; Raz, Tahl.

Three Types of Yes

I’ll let you in on a secret. There are actually three kinds of “Yes”: Counterfeit, Confirmation, and Commitment.

A counterfeit “yes” is one in which your counterpart plans on saying “no” but either feels “yes” is an easier escape route or just wants to disingenuously keep the conversation going to obtain more information or some other kind of edge.

A confirmation “yes” is generally innocent, a reflexive response to a black-or-white question; it’s sometimes used to lay a trap but mostly it’s just simple affirmation with no promise of action.

And a commitment “yes” is the real deal; it’s a true agreement that leads to action, a “yes” at the table that ends with a signature on the contract. The commitment “yes” is what you want, but the three types sound almost the same so you have to learn how to recognize which one is being used.

Voss, Chris; Raz, Tahl. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

You and Other People – Drama and Character

…the distinction we live with each day remains simply that between oneself and other people. And the primordial group of other people – our family  – makes up the original cast of characters in the drama of life, a drama that we keep on reviving later with more and more people cast for the same few parts. As for oneself, one is the invisible man. One cannot see oneself, one can only see those with whom one has chosen to be identified.

The raw material of character, then, is not very raw after all. It has already been worked over. It has already been turned into a kind of art: the art of fantasy. Life is a double fiction. We do not see others so much as certain substitutions for others. We do not see ourselves so much as others with whom we are identified. When Plato said we see, not life, but shadows of life flickering in the firelight on the wall of a cave, he was an optimist. Or perhaps he made allowances for the extraordinary distortions and suppressions of shadow play.

Eric Bentley. The Life of the Drama
From chapter 2, Character

Roommate Food Theft Investigation

We had a roommate stealing food situation too. There were 4 of us, the first 2 didn’t have their food stolen before, I’m the 3rd one moving in but whom everyone could see I buy my own food, and a 4th guy who moved in around the same time as me but always hung out in the living room. It was obvious who was stealing, but none of us had proof, nor was there anything we could do about it anyway, until I had a flu once and decided to buy orange juice to be healthy, but because it was for only me, I drank straight from the jug. A few days later the 4th guy and only the 4th guy caught the flu…

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/jlf1jm/ever_had_your_lunch_stolen_at_work/