Hello,
There has been no substack for a few weeks because I was taking a break to finish some other projects and also just to take a break. I’ve worked a lot this year and this is the least of my work, in terms of the time it takes up, but it is still a thing I do, week in, week out, and I believe people need to take breaks from their work routines to function properly.
I’ve been thinking recently about the role that empathy plays in manipulation. It is generally very hard to get anyone to do something that they haven’t already decided they want to do. So if you want to entice someone to do something, you have to either make it sound like an easy thing to do, or imagine that you are in their position and think about what would make you want to do whatever it is.
I learned this in some jobs I had a while back, when I had to give out flyers for clubs or, in one job, when I had to stop people on the street to interview them to go through a questionnaire I had, telling me about why they liked the street. Also when I worked in a call centre where we had to phone people up and ask if they would donate money to the children’s ward of a hospital.
Nobody wants to stop and talk to a stranger on the street while they click through an Ipad because they rightly think it is a waste of their time. Similarly nobody wants to donate money to someone who phones them up on a Thursday evening because it sounds like a scam. A children’s hospital is not unappealing as a prospect to donate to, and in person, especially if I was wearing, say, a Christmas outfit, or a Halloween costume, I can imagine this would actually be a very easy thing to get someone to do. Giving a few pounds to someone dressed up as a pumpkin in aid of sick children is in the category of things that would make you feel great about yourself for at least a few hours.
But over the phone doesn’t really have the same effect. And you can hang up a phone without having to look at me, forlorn in my pumpkin costume, shaking my bucket. Also nobody wants to go and get their handbag to get their card out to shout out the card details to a stranger on the phone. And then have the stranger shout back: A for alpha, N for november? And then you have to shout: No, m! And then you have to listen as they repeat back the long number on the front.
And nobody wants to take a flyer for anything because they’re then tasked with the issue of getting rid of it, which was the issue I had before I gave it to them.
The surprising thing to me was actually how often people did do these things, if you learned to present them in a certain way. I was surprised too to learn that I seemed to have a knack for this kind of thing. I would always make more, and sometimes more than double, what my colleagues had managed in donations to the hospital. Even those with much more experience. It meant I often got to go home early one shift a week, as a reward. And I had a huge strike rate at persuading people to fill out the questionnaire about the street, which meant I got a special bonus.
One of the things you had to think about was time. You had to emphasise how little time it would all take, how little hassle it would be, and not beg or hector. Things had to feel like a smooth, bureaucratic transaction, and not like a matter of life or death.
I stood near a colleague one day on the street who would beg. He would make a praying sign with his hands, clasping the Ipad underneath them and shout: Please, 5 minutes! It was an awful sight. Almost nobody stopped.
I spent all day thinking about why the begging was so awful. I think it was because he made it seem like you would have to get involved with something dramatic. It demanded too much of an emotional response. It exaggerated the nature of the transaction. He was asking people to respond to him as a person rather than as a clipboard, and actually a clipboard is much easier to deal with. I realised I don’t mind being asked to do something, but I hate being pleaded with or hectored.
Another thing was you had to not tell obvious lies. You could say things would take 3 minutes if they really took 4, but not 7. And it was best not to pretend you were trying to speak to people because you thought they were beautiful or stylish and so on. You were trying to speak to them because you needed them to do something for you, and they knew that already. Going up to someone and saying they had nice eyes while you extended your clipboard made them feel like you took them for an idiot. In a way I think it was the same as begging, it demanded too much of an emotional response.
Although I don’t think that means you can’t lie at all. A friend of mine who works in a fancy bar says he always cards women who he knows are in their 30s. The interaction starts on a high. The tips are better. He doesn’t think it would work for women much older than that.
Till next time xxxxx