Being Assertive?

A couple of days ago I made a trip to my local electronics store to get a new iPad, since I’m passing my venerable first-generation one down to my wife. I walked to the iPad section and started to play with a display unit. After about ten minutes, I noticed that nobody had approached me to see if I needed anything.

I decided to conduct an experiment and just stand by the display until somebody came over to help me. Twenty minutes passed and nobody came, so I decided to call a supervisor. After ten more minutes he finally showed up and, upon hearing my complain, tried to find a sales person around the floor.

He finally brought down a tattooed, ear-rung and goatee-ed young kid who, without even saying hello blurted: “Whacha want”. I let it slide, since at that point I just wanted to get my iPad and leave without any further waste of time.

As we were walking toward the iPad section he started telling me that he was on his lunch break, to which I replied that if that was the case he should have left somebody in charge. He immediately retorted: “It’s not my department, anyway”.

At that moment it clicked: this guy was not interested in apologizing and helping a customer. He wanted to get into an argument with me, and win! My answer didn’t take long: “You know what, thank you but I’m not buying anything from you or this store today. Bye”, and I walked away.

While that kind of assertiveness comes out more naturally to me now, it wasn’t always the case. Perhaps it had to do with my upbringing, growing up in a country where we were taught to always be nice, to wait for our turn, to respect authority and to raise our hand when we wanted to speak. It took a lot of time and effort on my part to retrain my brain to ignore most of that early programming.

I’ve also learned that being assertive doesn’t mean being paranoid. You’re not that important, so don’t worry, the world is not out to get you. At the same time, the world doesn’t care much about you either. The truth is that the only person who consistently and reliably has your best interests at heart is YOU.

Being assertive also doesn’t mean being an a-hole. In fact, you don’t need to raise your voice or treat others badly to command respect and authority. Take a cue from the best negotiators, who always remain calm and objective while never losing track of what they want to accomplish.

I’ll close with another example that happened to me today. I went to rotate my tires and asked the guy behind the counter how long would it take. The guy, a fast talker with a cell phone nested between his ear and right shoulder, practically grabbed the keys off my hand and started typing the work order. “Don’t worry ‘bro’,” he told me, “there’s ‘only’ two or three cars ahead of you”. Grabbing back my keys I answered back: “Excuse me, but I didn’t ask you how many cars are ahead of me. I asked you how long is it going to take”. Almost in shock, he told whoever he was speaking to on the phone that he would call her back, and talking to me now started mumbling: “Well (no ‘bro’ this time), it might be two or three hours; I only have one guy on the floor today”. “OK”, I told him, “I’ll be back”.

Of course I’ll never be back…

Unfortunately, the kind of attitude displayed by these two guys is the norm rather than the exception. Most people these days could very well wear a T-Shirt with the words “I don’t give a [insert your favorite four-letter word here] written all over it. What this means to you is that, if you’re not assertive enough, you’re up for a lot of disappointment and hardship. You’re basically setting yourself up for being taken advantage of.

Save yourself years of trial and error and believe me when I tell you that you need to be assertive. Take it from a guy who has been on this earth for fifty years, and has had a lot of experience (and experiences) to back it up. Pay careful attention to the way people treat you and, if something doesn’t feel right, don’t be afraid to politely but firmly show them that you’re not one to be pushed around and that you mean business.

By Mario Snachez Carrion