My Turn in the Hot Seat
Jul 17th, 2008 by admin
I was eavesdropping this morning. I should do it more often because what I heard was shocking. I could hardly believe that someone who had lived so long and learned so much still had so much to more learn.
What I listened in on was my own thinking. It happened as I was pulling away from the drive-in window at my local coffee shop. The barista handed me my boiling hot Americano and asked, “Want some napkins?” I shook my head no, and he said, “Drive carefully.”
My reaction was pretty bizarre. As best as I can recall, my stream of consciousness went something like this:
Napkins? Drive carefully? Who is this guy, a retired bartender? You don’t need to worry about my driving. You drive carefully…I’ll take care of my own driving. What is it with servers that they compulsively direct people to do something after every transaction? Have a nice day. Drive carefully. Enjoy your meal. Come back soon. Gee, thanks. Without your help, who knows what might happen…a bad day? Why not just a simple “thank you”?
After about thirty seconds or so, I was on a real roll, like the late, great George Carlin, but not at all whimsical like Carlin. I was being meaner and more belittling. By that time, I was making a right turn onto the street. With both hands on the steering wheel, I accelerated into traffic and glanced down to see the coffee cup tip and pour a couple of ounces of steaming hot coffee onto the seat. That pretty much ended my mental monologue.
I’m slow, but I caught on pretty fast after that. Napkins…it’s really full. Drive carefully…it’s hot and might spill.
I have to wonder how many times I’ve coached my clients to ask questions for understanding when they have a negative reaction to another person’s comment. Maybe a thousand times or more. You’d think I’d have learned it myself by now.
A beautiful question is “How do you mean that?” It tends to neutralize the emotions. And when asked truly innocently and honestly expecting to hear something important, we can learn a lot…like what another person sees and knows that we don’t.
Drive carefully. Oh, how do you mean that? I could have learned a lot and saved a trip to the cleaners.
