ril's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Accents and such... Accents and such� Having spent the better part of a year and a half up here in the great frozen north, I�ve learned a couple of survival tips for �Us Southerners� and I�d like to pass one of the most important along. You�re going to have to get used to the idea that whenever someone up here hears you speak they are _going_ to assume that you aren�t very smart. This will understandably grate your nerves, but � if you�ll just trust me� you really can use it to your advantage. For example, here�s a snippet from a telephone conversation I had just this week: Telephone: Ring. Ring. Female Voice on Phone: Facilities. Me: Yes ma�am, this is Mr. Me., I work in Department and I need to schedule a conference room for a meeting with some vendors. Female Voice on Phone: Who told you to call me? Me: One of the other managers said that your department handled this sort of thing, but maybe I misunderstood him. But, if you�re not the person I need to talk to, maybe you could tell me who else to call. Female Voice on Phone: Where you from? Me: Texas. I�ve only been with the Co. for about a year now and I�m still learning my way around. Female Voice on Phone: You sound like Elvis. That�s when I knew I had her� I don�t sound _anything_ like Elvis� I�m from Texas for cryin� out loud (but I guess all us Southerners sound the same to you Yankees).
Female Voice on Phone: (pause) You have to be careful with the �Darlin�� thing. It can backfire on you if you aren�t careful, but well-timed, it will work wonders. Strangely enough, you also have to be careful with �Thank you.� I was in a mid-town restaurant just after I got up here and said �Thank you� to the waitress. She whipped back around and said �Are you patronizing me?� � what the heck is _that_ all about? I think she believed me when I told her that I wasn't patronizing her, but damn� anyway�
It turns out that, the lower down the food chain the person you�re talking to is, the more they really want to believe that they�re smarter than you� it is your most powerful weapon.
I know that some of you won�t be happy about letting the Yankee get away with such an obviously incorrect assumption. I used to be the same way� but here�s the thing (and I owe this particular insight to law school)� if you�ll just keep in mind that our ultimate objective is to get "them" to do what you want them to�and realize that you just did�then you should be okay� you lulled them in� and then you let �em have it� think of it as verbal �rope-a-dope.� - 2002-01-24 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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