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The 5% Rule

jonpauluritis.com

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Re: The 5% Rule

#31

Post by tomrod »

kilroy123 wrote: post #22

This has been my experience as well. I, too, have met and talked to thousands of people from every possible background on seven different continents of this world. From the poorest people on Earth to some of the richest. I've seen the same thing. About 5% are nasty and about 1% are truly bad people who commit horrible crimes.

Makes me wonder if the distribution is independent of other personality and socioeconomic factors.

Much earlier in life I helped recruit for a cult (much has changed since then). 3% - 5% seems on the high side for people who "just suck" -- perhaps by an order of magnitude. But perhaps the "just sucks" is context dependent. I found early on the FORD bulletpoints makes it pretty simple to start smalltalk (Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams/Desires).

Re: The 5% Rule

#32

Post by Ozzie_osman »

Many laws, company policies, etc exist to prevent those 5% from causing damage to the rest of the population. So 95% of people have to live with restrictions and bureaucracy that merely exists for those small group.

Re: The 5% Rule

#33

Post by Animats »

Maybe there's a market for a list of such people.

Maybe Google or Facebook already has such a list for internal use. All that data mining ought to yield one.

Re: The 5% Rule

#34

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ronyeh wrote: post #11
flashgordon wrote: post #7

I wonder if you turn this around, could every body have a tendency to be nasty 5% of the time?

I think it's possible. I feel like even the most normal people can have an off day when they just want to be assholes to people for whatever reason. (I've personally done this, and later regretted.) So maybe the sales folks or bartenders are seeing those people on their off days.

Yeah. Been there, done that, trying to keep it well under 5%.

But that's different. There are people who are nasty more like 50% of the time, or maybe even 95%. It's good to recognize that yes, that's me some of the time, but "quantity has a quality all its own", as Stalin (allegedly?) said. Too much of that attitude and/or behavior puts you in a different category.

And even for people in that category, it's also important to realize that they have their 5% - or even 50% - where they aren't like that. That doesn't make you want to hang around them - even 50% jerk is too much for me to want to spend time with them - but still recognize that the other part is there, and appreciate it when you see it.

Re: The 5% Rule

#35

Post by Beltalowda »

plugin-baby wrote: post #16

> As an example: one time a lady threw a huge fit about a 2-3 inch smooth brown hair being in her meal when her server was a blond girl and the entire kitchen staff were 35+ year-old Mexicans/ African Americans with completely shaved heads. Now I'm not saying this woman brought the hair into the restaurant and planted it in her meal... but I know for a fact it couldn't have been from any of our staff in the restauran…

Whether it's from the kitchen staff or waiter is kind of irrelevant; throwing a "huge fit" is ridiculous regardless. Kitchen staff make mistakes all the time because it's hard work with a lot of pressure. You deal with it by saying "sorry to be a bother, but I'm afraid there's a mistake" and that should solve it. No fits needed. (Of course, we have just one side of the story and it could be that the staff was rude or dismissive after she politely pointed this out, so we'll never be able to judge this specific incident; but people exploding over minor things is something I've experienced as well when I worked in retail).

Re: The 5% Rule

#36

Post by macNchz »

flashgordon wrote: post #7

I wonder if you turn this around, could every body have a tendency to be nasty 5% of the time?

This definitely explains a portion of these "nasty encounters", but I think only a very small portion. The majority of people will at least attempt to be gracious even if they're having a really bad day.

Riffing off of the author's restaurant example: at the restaurant I worked at in college there were "known nasty" regulars. They were just...always horrible to the waitstaff. The hosts knew not to seat them in the veteran servers' sections, so I often dealt with them.

If they did happen to get seated in someone else's section, they'd get pawned off. Even the one waitress on the team who was constantly hustling to work every last table/shift/upsell she could manage would hand them off to me and let me keep the tip (if there was one...), rather than having to interact with them herself.

Re: The 5% Rule

#37

Post by NateEag »

someweirdperson wrote: post #15
ajaimk wrote: post #3

Only 5%? That gives me hope for humanity.

Depends on how much those 5% procreate compared to others.

Should be quite a lot, evolutionarily speaking.

Being a horrible manipulative jerk seems like a great reproduction strategy to me.

On average women will see through you and won't give you the time of day. Some will fall for your terrible abusive manipulation, though.

They get impregnated and you move on. Your victims will on average have the usual mothering instincts and will do their best to help their kid make it. Eventually, that should result in you generating many offspring.

I hope this strategy isn't conscious on anyone's part, but it sounds like one evolution would reward.

I hope someone can show me a fatal flaw in my reasoning.

Re: The 5% Rule

#38

Post by jppope »

plugin-baby wrote: post #16

> As an example: one time a lady threw a huge fit about a 2-3 inch smooth brown hair being in her meal when her server was a blond girl and the entire kitchen staff were 35+ year-old Mexicans/ African Americans with completely shaved heads. Now I'm not saying this woman brought the hair into the restaurant and planted it in her meal... but I know for a fact it couldn't have been from any of our staff in the restauran…

(OP) valid observation, but I was behind the bar...

Re: The 5% Rule

#39

Post by fbdab103 »

frellus wrote: post #12

I've found that a lot of people in our industry (higher than 5%, probably much higher the smarter they are) have BPD or are on the spectrum which causes anger issues when things don't fit the pattern or outcome they're expecting. I'm not saying that to disparage these people, but I've learned to be careful in how I interact with certain people, especially as that top tier of brilliant engineer are the ones I want to…

The House personality - where technical brilliance so outshines their behavior that they can be awful to those around them.

I will take an average but nice person over a genius asshole every time.

Re: The 5% Rule

#40

Post by Simon_O_Rourke »

ta988 wrote: post #8

This roughly matches my estimate of evil drivers on the road, people cutting lines violently and not using turning lights, pushing to insert on the right when they used the emergency lane to pass everybody in a slowdown...

Why attribute poor driving behavior to intent/malice when most of it can be adequately explained by gross stupidity?

People can be just plain dumb.

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