![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI've been re-reading Steven Gould's Jumper and one thing that struck me was the emphasis on how strangers treat each other when they are interacting. Specifically, when you see someone making a mistake, you can make them feel like an idiot, or you can correct them sensitively.
In the book, Davey becomes a runaway teenager who still has a lot to learn. At a restaurant, he tries to pay the waiter, and the waiter tells him something like "I can take your payment and bring it to the cashier, or you can pay the cashier on your way out." This showed him the right thing to do without making him feel like an idiot. Davey was so impressed that he left a very large tip.
I saw the same thing happen in real life, in the middle of reading the book. My mother got some belts for her vacuum cleaner from the cashier. Mom put the money on the counter and waited expectantly. The cashier said something like "Forty [more] cents will do it!" Instead of implying that Mom wasn't listening or couldn't count, she implied that Mom was 95% of the way toward perfection.
My favorite recent example was, "Remember, photography is not actually allowed here." As opposed to my favorite recent counterexample: "How could you possibly think photography would be allowed here?!"
You never know what a sharp rebuke will do to someone--it could be the last straw for them. Yet sadly, tact is not something we talk about much in this culture. Many people don't even know what it is--they think they're being tactful by not addressing a problem at all--just letting the person go on doing something wrong. And then avoiding that person as much as possible.
In books and movies, you could argue that there's no time for tact. Heck, there's no time to thank people in movies, and rarely time to apologize, though movies are full of things for which most people would feel thankful or apologetic. My favorite counter-example here is in the movie "Fargo." The main cop character in the second half of the movie is one of my favorite movie characters of all time, and much of it is because of her incredible tact. For example, one of her co-workers is unbelievably clueless, but she tells him the obvious without rolling her eyes or even letting on that it's more than just good luck that she's able to figure these things out. She treats him as if he is a valuable co-worker, almost so much so that you think he really might come in handy one day.
(That movie also has another interesting character--a bad guy of the used-car-salesman variety. But then it also has two stereotypical characters, the stupid bad guy and the intelligent but vicious bad guy. And it's horribly violent. But it also has cool Minnesota accents. And one of the characters is pregnant and has to eat all the time. And they show a totally awesome marriage at work--and not the kind of marriage that ends near the beginning of the movie so that it can turn into a revenge flick, either.)
Journal entry of the day: Starting Again, by Patrick - My favorite online journalist has started up again. In this first entry, you get to see his new psychiatrist tell him "That's a load of crap. I've dealt with bipolar patients before, and you're no more bipolar than I am." And best of all, you get to see him happy. Plus this is a great example of a year-end summary entry.
In the book, Davey becomes a runaway teenager who still has a lot to learn. At a restaurant, he tries to pay the waiter, and the waiter tells him something like "I can take your payment and bring it to the cashier, or you can pay the cashier on your way out." This showed him the right thing to do without making him feel like an idiot. Davey was so impressed that he left a very large tip.
I saw the same thing happen in real life, in the middle of reading the book. My mother got some belts for her vacuum cleaner from the cashier. Mom put the money on the counter and waited expectantly. The cashier said something like "Forty [more] cents will do it!" Instead of implying that Mom wasn't listening or couldn't count, she implied that Mom was 95% of the way toward perfection.
My favorite recent example was, "Remember, photography is not actually allowed here." As opposed to my favorite recent counterexample: "How could you possibly think photography would be allowed here?!"
You never know what a sharp rebuke will do to someone--it could be the last straw for them. Yet sadly, tact is not something we talk about much in this culture. Many people don't even know what it is--they think they're being tactful by not addressing a problem at all--just letting the person go on doing something wrong. And then avoiding that person as much as possible.
In books and movies, you could argue that there's no time for tact. Heck, there's no time to thank people in movies, and rarely time to apologize, though movies are full of things for which most people would feel thankful or apologetic. My favorite counter-example here is in the movie "Fargo." The main cop character in the second half of the movie is one of my favorite movie characters of all time, and much of it is because of her incredible tact. For example, one of her co-workers is unbelievably clueless, but she tells him the obvious without rolling her eyes or even letting on that it's more than just good luck that she's able to figure these things out. She treats him as if he is a valuable co-worker, almost so much so that you think he really might come in handy one day.
(That movie also has another interesting character--a bad guy of the used-car-salesman variety. But then it also has two stereotypical characters, the stupid bad guy and the intelligent but vicious bad guy. And it's horribly violent. But it also has cool Minnesota accents. And one of the characters is pregnant and has to eat all the time. And they show a totally awesome marriage at work--and not the kind of marriage that ends near the beginning of the movie so that it can turn into a revenge flick, either.)Journal entry of the day: Starting Again, by Patrick - My favorite online journalist has started up again. In this first entry, you get to see his new psychiatrist tell him "That's a load of crap. I've dealt with bipolar patients before, and you're no more bipolar than I am." And best of all, you get to see him happy. Plus this is a great example of a year-end summary entry.