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The 5% Rule

jonpauluritis.com

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Re: The 5% Rule

#141

Post by jiggawatts »

metadat wrote: post #116
jiggawatts wrote: post #62

Personality traits like this are on a Bell curve, so he's just talking about the "left hand corner" of that curve. The percentage just depends on your threshold for tolerance. I know people who are convinced that 50% of people are horrible people, their tolerance stops at "anything left of the median". My tolerance is the opposite, and I can work with even quite problematic people successfully, so I would estimate th…

Hey jiggawatts, I agree, and want to also add: If you're in software / tech (if this is an incorrect assumption on my part please say so and I apologize in advance; I've become used to seeing your posts and my sense is this might be your domain), on average you're working with people who are significantly more intelligent than the average adult human being. In my experience, the rate of nasty / miserable / mentally u…

That's a valid point, there is significant selection bias in different workplaces, locations, and institutions.

E.g.: I noticed variance comparable to yours going from a general public school in a poor neighbourhood to a university.

Re: The 5% Rule

#142

Post by ghayes »

IanCal wrote: post #125
sodapopcan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the examples given in the article make me think it would consider screaming at a representative of a company that’s wrongfully cost you thousands of dollars after you’ve spent months trying to rectify it as part of the “5%”. That’s totally reasonable, even if it want directly the representative’s fault. Screaming at a service worker because of a hair in your food isn’t—that’s psychotic.

No, screaming at a worker whose job is to answer the phones is not reasonable. It shouldn't have cost them anything either - you shouldn't be paying incorrect bills. Had they filed official complaints? Gone to any regulator? Had the issue escalated?

While I agree, I’d also argue that some companies put out purposefully bad policies and then staff customer service reps to handle the blow back. These situations are often really bad for the consumers and the staff.

Re: The 5% Rule

#143

Post by ransom1538 »

Growing up my friend's dad was a prison guard. He mentioned once that 95% of the people in jail shouldn't be there. They did something stupid, or did a bunch of dumb things, but were not evil. He wouldn't talk about the remaining 5%.

Re: The 5% Rule

#145

Post by beautifulfreak »

Personality disorders are very real and surprisingly prevalent, with 3.6% of Americans meeting the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder and 4.4% for paranoid personality disorder (the two disorders that are most likely to make people difficult and unpleasant to deal with). https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/pn.3...

Re: The 5% Rule

#146

Post by vidarh »

IanCal wrote: post #125
sodapopcan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the examples given in the article make me think it would consider screaming at a representative of a company that’s wrongfully cost you thousands of dollars after you’ve spent months trying to rectify it as part of the “5%”. That’s totally reasonable, even if it want directly the representative’s fault. Screaming at a service worker because of a hair in your food isn’t—that’s psychotic.

No, screaming at a worker whose job is to answer the phones is not reasonable. It shouldn't have cost them anything either - you shouldn't be paying incorrect bills. Had they filed official complaints? Gone to any regulator? Had the issue escalated?

I have screamed at support people, but only in the rare cases (maybe three times on the last 30+ years would qualify) where they personally acted unreasonably and reasoning with them did not work, and they refused to pass me to a supervisor. The last part being key to me.

In the vast majority of cases I agree with you - if it's the company's fault it's not fair to scream at people with no power to do what you ask (but if there are no other means it may be fair to be intentionally difficult to force them to escalate - but you don't need to be rude to be difficult).

Re: The 5% Rule

#147

Post by vineyardmike »

metadat wrote: post #116
jiggawatts wrote: post #62

Personality traits like this are on a Bell curve, so he's just talking about the "left hand corner" of that curve. The percentage just depends on your threshold for tolerance. I know people who are convinced that 50% of people are horrible people, their tolerance stops at "anything left of the median". My tolerance is the opposite, and I can work with even quite problematic people successfully, so I would estimate th…

Hey jiggawatts, I agree, and want to also add: If you're in software / tech (if this is an incorrect assumption on my part please say so and I apologize in advance; I've become used to seeing your posts and my sense is this might be your domain), on average you're working with people who are significantly more intelligent than the average adult human being. In my experience, the rate of nasty / miserable / mentally u…

I have a slightly contrary opinion.

In my experience, the smarter someone is, the more entitled/bratty they tend to be (especially to service workers or people they look down on).

On the other hand, “dumber” people (or just poorer people without a knowledge job tbh) tend to be more screwed over by society and may be more reactionary.

Eg. A swe might talk down to a waiter and be demeaned while they work, but a poor person may resort to yelling at a bank representative on the phone because that mistaken $10 charge affects their ability to buy groceries, and it happens all the time.

Re: The 5% Rule

#148

Post by tomrod »

thewebcount wrote: post #48

While I’m sure this is a real problem, I’ve been on the other side of this equation where you’ve tried your level best to get a problem resolved, and not only haven’t had it resolved, but have been repeatedly screwed even more. For example, many years ago, I signed up for a landline phone (when that’s all there was), and signed up for a particular special service that Ameritech was offering that would allow me to hav…

It isn't your fault. Support systems are designed to triage and remediate. This means the loudest voices get served the best, or, that the squeaky wheel gets what they need. Of course, there are limits to this. One thing I've noticed is when I am in an automated call tree with voice recognition, speaking loudly (almost yelling), gruffly, and demanding a human will often get you an level 2 or higher support tech. I tend to shut this off when a human gets on the line, but the call does get dispositioned and often white-gloved.

Re: The 5% Rule

#149

Post by nullsense »

switchbak wrote: post #137
msrenee wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head, I can think of a half dozen people I've known who are just horrible all of the time. Nasty to their family, nasty to coworkers, nasty to strangers. I can think of another half dozen who are just in the habit of mistreating service workers. Some people you're just catching on a bad day, but there is definitely a portion of the population that are just crappy people.

Disagreeable personalities are definitely a thing, and some have some other stuff stacked on top that can make for persistently unreasonable people. Off the top of my head I knew someone who had a really hard loss that they couldn't cope with, and you could basically just see them reeling it in all the time, and that was expressed outwardly as anger. Really tragic situation though, and if you didn't know the details…

>Disagreeable personalities are definitely a thing, and some have some other stuff stacked on top that can make for persistently unreasonable people.

I score in the bottom 3rd percentile for trait agreeableness. I'm mostly polite unless perhaps I know something is not right and someone is trying to pull a fast one. I can totally see how low agreeableness combined with being towards the lower end of the distribution on intelligence would make a default strategy of loudly saying your piece and being too dense to a) know you shouldn't do that, b) consider your lack of understanding might be the root of the problem and c) comprehend the implications of what you're being told so that you can calm the heck down.

I really feel for those people.

Re: The 5% Rule

#150

Post by _carbyau_ »

magic_hamster wrote: post #132

The silly thing is to assume that since you had a bad experience with someone they are like this all the time. When you work sales, some people will enter your store on the day they got dumped, their family member died, they got kicked out of school. You never know why people are acting out. Chances are it's nothing about you. Other cases, it might not be the person's first time in the store. If they tried several ti…

A few thoughts on your "bad day" idea though.

It depends on how you handle a bad day. If you are self aware and explain "I am having a bad day before I got here." any rep with a modicum of empathy will appreciate your grace/effort to not lose your shit, often being extra nice about it.

But that relies on customer 5% not meeting a rep in that 5% too.

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