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No is a complete sentence

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Re: No is a complete sentence

#81

Post by r_hoods_ghost »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #70
r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #57

Oh god not this again. I'm not sure if this is just ripped off or if this is another person encouraging others to commit career and / or social suicide. To be blunt if you do this to me in the workplace and you are my direct report you will get a verbal warning. If you do it repeatedly you will get fired. If you are a colleague and you do this I will report you, and will never help you. If you do this to me and I kno…

Reporting your colleagues for being curt is also career suicide.

This is not being curt though. This is deliberately ignoring social conventions in the workplace, consciously withholding information from your colleagues. If I ask you to do something as your boss I expect you to either of it or give ma reason as to why you can't do it. I may tell you to do it anyway. If you are a colleague and I ask you for help I expect you to either help, because I wouldn't ask you to help otherwise and I am probably asking you to do something that is literally your job to do, or I expect you to give me a good reason as to why you can't do what I am asking you to do. If you just say no then I am going to assume that you are literally refusing to do your job in which case you are a problem and I would rather I not have to work with you. As a manager if I get told that one of my direct reports has refused to do something without giving a reason that person is getting a serious talking to and if they do it again then HR is getting involved. Seriously. Don't do this.

Re: No is a complete sentence

#83

Post by pjc50 »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #4

Returning a very terse answer to a person who has taken the time to make complex, well reasoned argument/request is rude though. And we all know that. With speech, the trick is to anticipate someone is building up to a "big ask", and cut it short, politely. Otherwise you're letting the other humiliate themself for a long time when you know your answer is going to have to be 'no'. Brevity is occasionally good. A quick…

> At officer school they teach you "not to umm and err", or to "soften" speech.

Many years ago, in a social rather than work setting, a friend of mine (A) who presented in the normal geek manner of appearance was trying to explain someone when another friend tried to talk on top of him. However, A had had a previous life where he'd joined the navy at 16, so he simply raised his voice to be heard while maintaining a conversational tone. The interrupter backed off, but tried again later, and was met with a full volume "JAMES I AM TALKING".

A was allowed to finish his anecdote with no further interruptions.

(This was at Cambridge, so all of us were several points ahead in "posh" to start with. It took me some years to fully appreciate how badly people who'd made it there on pure merit from a working class background could simply get conversationally "run over" all the time)

Interpersonal power politics is real, even among a group of friends who have chosen each others company, and it can be quite sharp at the office, while at the same time it's usually constrained to not "breaking the surface". Hence the development of non-blunt no-equivalents such as "that's against policy" or "you'll have to clear that with X". But occasionally you do have to risk being seen as the bad guy in order to assert your position in the power hierarchy.

(obligatory disclaimer too that many of these things have very different outcomes if the same words or manner of speech are used by a woman or non-white or second-language person)

Re: No is a complete sentence

#84

Post by AndrewOMartin »

kingforaday wrote: post #10
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #5

From an organizational perspective, this is horrible advice: > Let me tell you clearly. “No” is a complete sentence. It requires no explanation or defense. The "It requires no explanation or defense" part is just plain wrong . If someone asks you to do something in an organization, it's fine to say "No", but an explanation is nearly always expected. And this explanation is critical, because often time the answer is s…

Great advice from Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener”: simply saying “I would prefer not to…” has worked so many times for me.

I once heard, "I'd love to want to, but I don't".

Re: No is a complete sentence

#85

Post by pjc50 »

tejtm wrote: post #9
nonrandomstring wrote: post #4

Returning a very terse answer to a person who has taken the time to make complex, well reasoned argument/request is rude though. And we all know that. With speech, the trick is to anticipate someone is building up to a "big ask", and cut it short, politely. Otherwise you're letting the other humiliate themself for a long time when you know your answer is going to have to be 'no'. Brevity is occasionally good. A quick…

I understand and agree from an all things being equal perspective. But thing are not all equal. I have worked with folks who could talk circles around a flock of Toastmaster clubs and weaponizing words in meetings relaying on social norms of "civil" as cover happens. The expected 10x effort to counter a falsehood can be inflated to 100x if it is dressed up real pretty. A Volumocracy, where the more verbose or apparen…

> The expected 10x effort to counter a falsehood can be inflated to 100x if it is dressed up real pretty.

This has become an overwhelming problem on the internet, and fundamentally it's why we have downvotes: it takes hundreds of keypresses and careful thought to counter nonsense or weaponized civility, and only one to downvote.

Re: No is a complete sentence

#89

Post by remram »

ornornor wrote: post #51
Pompidou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Je préférerais ne pas.

That’s not grammatically correct in my opinion. I’d say “je n’aime autant pas” ou “je ne préférerais pas” but it doesn’t sound exactly like it should.

"je ne préférerais pas" is "I would not prefer to" not "I would prefer not to"

"je n'aime autant pas" is "I might as well not"

Re: No is a complete sentence

#90

Post by remram »

froh wrote: post #68
inopinatus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1] counter-counter-example: "which one is your favourite unix command?" "no, yes".

Indeed an example which needs more explanation. I don't get what you mean https://linux.die.net/man/1/no

It works if your are asked "which is your favorite command?" "no, yes" ('which' is a command).

It doesn't work if you are asked "which one is your favorite command".

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