Saying No(rozumem.xyz) |
Why do so many supposedly educated people from developed countries have completely pseudoscientific beliefs about A/C?
It’s so bizarre and frankly, embarrassing to even read. You will sweat exactly the same as you would at 30% RH at 72 degrees on a cool day outdoors. There’s nothing mystical about the air conditioner at work here.
What are these pseudoscientific and mystical beliefs you've read before and apparently mistakenly applied to this post (because they sound interesting, if only in a "WTF?" kind of way)? I can't make head or tail of what you think his meaning is, and given the downvotes, it seems others can't either.
"AC on" crowd usually have no consideration for anyone and rarely understands that while air flow matters, the temperature doesn't have to be freezing.
"Don't do it" note have as much validity as "Nah, I will" reaction. The fact that conversation happened is a win, and it's fine, that the problem wasn't solved in the best possible way, it isn't lingering anymore, so that's a better outcome that nothing.
The closest they came to negotiation was when they were doing yoga alone in one room and "decided" to allow a dozen other people in a different room to turn their A/C on.
> On these days, I've told them to turn the AC off until we're done. One day, I was the only one practicing and I had to tell this to a dozen people outside the room. I will never forget the bugged looks I got back. Eventually their leader spoke up and we decided that they can turn on the AC further away from the room.
Then when the other tenants finally get sick of this, they get the owner on the phone. This is the negotiating opportunity. Instead, this person gloats about not listening:
> The man on the other end introduced himself as some authority figure and told me to turn the AC back on. He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand. But then he asked me in an accusing tone, why I turned it off despite the note saying not to. Peter Block would find this question childish. After all, two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want. They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference.
I think they forgot to consider that the other person can also say "no". This is the climax of the negotiation opportunity, and he uses it to tell off the manager:
> After some filler words, he said he will talk to the owner terminating the contract and giving a refund. I said great and hung up.
The intense worship for Peter Block throughout the post is a strange contrast to the way they fail to implement any part of the advice other than the "No" part.
There was no negotiation here. Just a strange pyrrhic victory.
Upvote for "pyrrhic victory" that is perfectly what this is.
He missed the opportunity to work with the other side to find a mutually beneficial solution.
Now they have no studio and the other side have their aircon exactly how they like it.
This should be a lesson in cutting off your nose despite your face.
He had paid to rent the space for a particular purpose. He had already compromised by allowing a portion of the space to be less than ideal for his use. The other side was demanding “completely our way and nothing for you” given fabricated reasons.
He did not care to understand because he could tell the reasons were not legitimate.
No was the right answer and to call the manager’s bluff. He does t make the final decision, the owner does.
Compromise is about figuring out how to give everybody what they want while letting go of how it happens. Turning on half the ACs is a great compromise. Whatever happened at the end is not.
To be generous to the author though, I can see how standing up for yourself in this way would feel revolutionary to someone who has never pushed back in their life. Just know this is the first step on a much longer journey. The next step is figuring out what the compromise would have been with the authority figure on the phone.
Is there supposed to be a teaching in here?
The alternative was using the phone call with the manager to calmly explain the situation and try to negotiate.
The blog kept talking about using "no" as a starting point for negotiating, then when the negotiation opportunity peaked he refused to listen to the other person and gloated about it.
The second half of the book's advice (the negotiate part) flew right over his head. He was too stuck on the "No" part.
wouldn't part of an "adult-to-adult conversation" also be to try and listen to the other, if nothing else than to understand their arguments?
> After some filler words, he said he will talk to the owner terminating the contract and giving a refund. I said great and hung up.
If that's what OP understands as "negotiating the difference" then ok, I guess...
Don’t get me wrong, the note itself wasn’t great either, but ignoring it wasn’t some great sign of „saying no“ - it was needlessly escalating a conflict instead of trying to resolve it.
> They should expect a possible answer to be 'No' and be prepared to negotiate the difference. I didn't throw these wise words back at him, but that's what was going through my head. And it emboldened me further. I simply told him the room is unusable for yoga with the AC on and we've paid rent for the room.
They were emboldened to discard even mentioning negotiation and stood their ground instead. That might be fine if the lesson you're trying to illustrate is one about firm boundaries but the advice they're holding up here was very much the opposite.
Further more, my rule: the more someone tells you how mature their position is and how child like you're being the more the odds increase that the only problem is that your opponent doesn't have a mirror or an ounce of introspection.
And on that note, has no one involved heard of a thermostat?
> “Answering ‘non’ gives you the option to say ‘oui’ [yes] later; [it’s] the opposite when you say ‘oui’, you can no longer say ‘non’!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20190804-why-the-french...
E.g. "I am keen, and will likely do that I just need a day to think/research/decide".
I'm very skeptical of people who pick One Simple Trick to solve all problems.
1. Who are you saying NO to - Ideally what you are saying NO to should have mattered more however in real world incentives and repercussions matter a lot
2. How are you saying NO - Even if one saying a direct NO the tone matters, other times there are ways where you can add precursor conditions (which make it a automatic NO) or you put it on the backlog way too far down that it never gets a real chance to be acted upon.
Putting it on the backlog is the corporate style of saying no without saying NO. Smart people just avoid getting into backlog and just truncate it if its been in the backlog for way too long.
If someone says "No" to me, and it's something that I really, really want, then negotiations can begin. If the other party is impervious to compromise, then it's incumbent upon me to either "live with it," or "flee the scene" (or call Vinnie and Bugsy, to do some negotiating for me).
My experience -especially these days- is that people see "No" as either a personal affront, or to be discounted and ignored, because it isn't what they want to hear.
"No." is a complete sentence. I don't owe anyone an explanation (unless we start negotiating). I need to accept that, from others.
This feels like a story from someone who just crossed the threshold into adulthood and thinks that makes him the "dad" now.
Not negotiating is also an option, and not something to feel weird or anxious about.
Worst case scenario. Against my best instincts, I opened my door to a salesman. He wanted to sell me new Internet service. I said No. He asked why. I thanked him for his time and closed the door. He's a trained hustler, and I'm a terrible negotiator. Nothing good would ever come of negotiating with him. I can make a perfectly good estimate of the probability of us finding a mutually acceptable middle ground... zero.
People will constantly ask you for things that are not in your best interest at all. They're betting on a chance that you will feel obligated to give them something. They can learn that sometimes people will say No without giving a satisfactory reason. They have probably already learned it.
Saying no will sometimes have consequences, and the counterpart is sometimes unreasonable.
> He listed some vague reasons, compressor this, compressor that, costs, etc... which I didn't care to understand.
> two adults should be able to ask each other for what they want
... Which they would be able to do if you actually listened to the guy instead of dismissing him as someone you didn't understand?
Let’s say no to this kind of mentality.
The landlord was probably trying to squeeze some small margin by leasing unoccupied hours. The loss of occupancy is probably a small rounding error.
The yoga group now without a space. A major loss for them.
What led you to this conclusion?
1. It’s not clear who wrote the note, and they didn’t leave contact info or any opening to a negotiation. If the note had said “this AC must stay on at all times, please call 111-222-3333 with any questions - building engineer” that would’ve completely reversed the morality of story for me. But the note asserts authority by making this non-negotiable demand (which is the part that seems patronizing to me—I agree with TFA here) and doesn’t justify that authority at all, no “I’m the owner” or anything.
2. The first step of finding a compromise is knowing what everybody wants. The author of TFA didn’t seem to do that in the story, and his apparent lack of curiosity about the compressor does not reflect well, I agree, but neither does a threat from whoever wrote the note.
My wild guess here is that the person who wrote the note worked in maintenance and was unhappy about the building warming and cooling and wanted a stable temperature. The resolution may well be that the author has to find a new place to do yoga, but if he’s not interested in air-conditioned yoga, and the building’s authorities aren’t interested in tenants who want the AC off, that outcome might have been inevitable anyway.
In this scenario, where a compromise was reached and then breached by the other party, how exactly would you arrive at a "compromise"?
It doesn't magically give you the upper hand in one-sided negotiations. It only ensures that your actions are in line with your principles.
If the authority figure has the balls to say 'fine, I'll get your contract terminated' I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that was exactly the outcome.
I would not assume the manager was making things up. He might have truly believed what he was saying. In these situations if you take the time to understand, you can get a lot of leverage by getting to the root of their concerns and then building a pathway to address them mutually.
If they thought it was going to harm the compressor, you would listen and understand their concerns. Then you would explain that you are familiar with the system and can show them that it won't cause harm to the compressor. Then you propose a reasonable alternative, such as offering to set it to the desired temperature as soon as you leave and possibly sending them some authoritative HVAC source to allay their fears.
The person in this story didn't even try to do that.
If you spend time with professional sales people (the good ones), the first thing you learn is that you have to listen to the other side, understand the root of their concerns, and work toward a mutual resolution. If you shut down and refuse to even listen, you get nowhere like this guy.
I don't do sports but assuming the muscle heat requirement is a thing, how does anyone exercise or do heavy work outside in countries where the temperature falls to 18° some days of the year? Presumably one could use a jacket? And how do the office workers manage in 18° air? I'm a dude and I'd still freeze my nipples off when doing desk work when you can cook eggs outside and I came in a t-shirt. There's so much here that isn't explored and then the story ends open-ended. It doesn't seem useful even as an n=1 anecdote
If the AC got turned off last night the building is sort of like the burning embers of a fire that will reheat the room, then at 8 or 9am you are at 30C and your building is getting that energy too.
To win that race your AC may need to come in early and start bailing out BTUs before the race begins. Even earlier than a yogi rises from bed to their practice!
The 25c setting is usually a basic thermometer and then on/off or maybe power adjustment to the unit.
Metabolism produces heat, human bodies have a complex heat management system, that for reasons of physics, is much better at heating itself up when it's cold, than cooling itself when it's hot.
> how does anyone exercise or do heavy work outside in countries where the temperature falls to 18° some days of the year?
18°C is t-shirt territory if you're exercising or doing physical work. As you go below that, you adjust your clothing to keep enough body heat, trying to maintain the point when you aren't sweating badly at peak effort.
The reason is that a lot of people do cave. "Free" wins. If it does not work, they just pretend nothing happened.
Few people cave when there are lots of eyes on them., and less people make empty threats with a bar full of spectators - that's why punches get thrown.
Regardless : 'I'm a renter' is by no means a strong argument unless you have a very specifically worded renter agreement -- it's pretty obviously a bad idea to anger the crowd of presumably better paying tenants, what would you do as a land owner, kick out the group every other tenant hates or change policy to protect the small fry?
Nothing. You would do nothing.
You want both to stay, because you also don't enjoy losing any amount of money, and not doing anything is most likely going to get you that.
From the "I'll get you thrown out"-party, it's the same tactic again, directed at the landlord this time. Moving buildings is neither fun nor cheap. Your employees would have to go somewhere else, there might not be anywhere else close by that is convenient to you or as nice/familiar as the place you got, some people might quit over any annoyance this brings too.
Nobody enjoys this shit. There are contracts. There are lawyers. It's never fun to do these things and it can all be dragged out for a long time. Being a somewhat bigger renter is (fortunately) not something that helps you in a court of law.
> Regardless : 'I'm a renter' is by no means a strong argument unless you have a very specifically worded renter agreement
It's a very strong default argument, unless you have a specifically worded agreement, that would strip you of a potential right.
Being in the same yacht club as the owner of the building conveys these kind of powers - it's like no one has encountered preferential treatment, good or bad, before.