Don't yell at waitresses. You look like a jerk and it blows investments.

http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/20/dont-yell-at-waitresses-you-look-like-a-jerk-and-it-blows-investments/

by g0atbutt • 15 years ago

127 77 15 years ago

jschuur3• 15 years ago

I just hope they reminded the VC exactly why they were leaving, so he had a chance to think about his attitude.

g0atbutt3• 15 years ago

He said something along the lines of "I'm very sorry for my friends rude behavior. Nobody should should act like that". I think the angel investor got the point.

jschuur3• 15 years ago

Too subtle. Easy for him to think it's fine to treat a waitress that way and that he can still function with 'real people'. He needed to be reminded that this is a sign of a fundamental character flaw.

Not to rub it in, but on the chance that this might lead him to redemption.

bjelkeman-again• 15 years ago

@jschuur Don't you think the investor will take the easy way out and not shout at people when discussing investments, but not actually change as a person?

I think these type of behaviors are deeply set. They can be changed, but I think it is more likely that the investor learns to be more subtle when discussing with an investment target, rather than actually becoming a nicer person, which requires a real change of character.

keiferski• 15 years ago

I just wanted to comment on the excellent picture choice. Didn't realize it was a cup of coffee until I read through the article.

I then imagined myself as the entrepreneur, staring down into his coffee on the table, pondering the deal. I don't think I would've had the same visual response with a stock photo of a coffee cup. Not sure if that was your intent, but good job either way.

g0atbutt3• 15 years ago

Thanks for your kind words. My background is in design and I have a lot of fun working on those little graphics. All the best - Paul.

akgerber• 15 years ago

When I was younger all the grownups would offer advice like "Don't choose an immature name like Goat Butt to use online. No one will ever take you seriously." Remember that?

I'm glad you're dedicating yourself to proving them wrong.

hollerith• 15 years ago

I spent about 5 seconds puzzling over why the graphic was there. I'm not sure what I think about that. On the minus, side that''s 5 seconds I will never get back. On the plus side, it built tension that I was probably able to use to read the article. My words apply only to people who are new to your site because of course after a reader has seen a few of these designs, he or she will not have the puzzlement reaction I had.

pjscott• 15 years ago

I never did figure out that it was a coffee cup, but for some reason I really enjoyed staring at it. I'm still not sure why.

Looking through the rest of your blog, the visual design is really well done, in an understated way. If you felt like expounding on this sort of thing, I'm sure you'd find an enthusiastic audience.

X-Istence• 15 years ago

I realised what it was almost immediately, and then read the article because I thought it was clever.

PStamatiou• 15 years ago

While reading this my mind pictured a scenario at a booth at Buck's restaurant of Woodside, CA. I've had my fair share of investor meetings/coffees there and it immediately came to mind.

(Scoble talks about why Buck's is a landmark of SV: http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/04/silicon-valley-places-that-... )

jdludlow• 15 years ago

You can tell a lot about a person by the way that he treats waiters, waitresses, janitors, clerks, and other lower paying service jobs.

reeses• 15 years ago

Nassim Taleb had a good quote that can be stretched to fit this. "Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them."

It's more enlightened self-interest or utilitarianism than categorical imperative, but the gist is the same. Don't ignore the people you foolishly regard as unimportant.

To quote from the other end of the spectrum,"The people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances, we guard you while you sleep. Do not f--- with us."

bigiain• 15 years ago

Oh come on, it's _not_ about having people "remember who slighted them".

It's about not being a dick.

Most people understand this just fine - you don't be a dick to the CEO or the Venture Capitalist because you're not a dick. You don't be a dick to the waitress or the janitor because you're not a dick. It's pretty easy.

_Some_ people though, have to work hard at not being a dick to the investors 'cause there's something in it for them, and don't bother working hard at not being a dick to waitresses. The only reason they have any trouble with it is because they _are_ dicks.

And as the article and a lot of these comments point out, other people _do_ notice.

SkyMarshal• 15 years ago

More broadly, you can tell a lot about a person by the way he treats people who can do absolutely nothing for him.

vacri3• 15 years ago

Expanding on that, you can tell a lot about a society by the way it treats its least valuable members.

rudiger2• 15 years ago

I've heard a variant of this as "The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."

corin_5• 15 years ago

While that's a good quote, it's not quite relevant for people such as waiters. In my experience, being polite and tipping generously regularly gets me a speedier and more pleasant service. Sometimes it won't make a difference, sometimes it will make even more of a difference, such as a free drink or two, but more often than not it does have a positive impact on the service you receive.

That's true not just with waiters, but in many service situations - for example, in Oxford (a fairly small city with fairly low numbers of taxis required) a lot of the drivers know me, and when I call for a ride it takes a taxi, in my experience, roughly half the average time to arrive, simply because the drivers on duty know that I will be a pleasant customer and a good tipper.

Getting better service shouldn't be a neccesary reason to treat people well, but it's certainly a nice bonus.

_delirium• 15 years ago

Trying to dig up the source for this quote leads to quite an array of people it's been attributed to! So far I've turned up variants sourced to: Abigail van Buren (the old name of "Dear Abby"), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a Reader's Digest letter-writer named James D. Miles, and Malcolm S. Forbes. Most of the attributions are questionable, though (e.g. I haven't found anybody actually pointing to where in Goethe's works such a quote can be found).

raganwald• 15 years ago

..and the brilliantly insightful but ironic quote:

I don’t hire people who have to be told to be nice. I hire nice people.--Leona Helmsley

uxp• 15 years ago

In case you were curious of a source, this link cites Ann Landers as the author.

http://quotationsbook.com/quote/40407

mattholling• 15 years ago

I have heard of companies that actually have their secretaries weigh in on what candidate should receive job offers based on how the secretary was treated when no one was looking.

Tichy• 15 years ago

I recently read a small autobiographical book by Richard Branson, and apparently at one point he took part in a TV show where he would judge aspiring employees. I thought it very cool that he disguised himself as an elderly driver who picked up the aspirants from the airport and noted how he was treated.

moondowner• 15 years ago

There was a saying, something in this style: "A person that is nice to you but not to the waitress, is not a good person."

rdl2• 15 years ago

$40k for 15% post means he was screwing you to begin with, unless it was money which came with a technical cofounder attached, or someone with huge industry connections in a non-tech vertical product company, or happened in 1975.

You should thank the investor for giving you another obvious sign to warn you away.

g0atbutt3• 15 years ago

He was providing a lot more then just upfront cash.

mikeklaas• 15 years ago

So… what do you think of ycombinator terms?

rdl2• 15 years ago

As just money, it would be horrible. As a whole package, it's basically the standard for incubator, quite successful, and has a great oversubscription ratio.

TryThinking• 15 years ago

Perhaps this advice transcends "investments" and "entrepreneurs" and even "waitresses."

corin_5• 15 years ago

The more important point isn't that you look like a jerk, it's that you are a jerk.

protomyth• 15 years ago

Yeah, it fits in with these "I am sorry you were offended at what I said" apologies.

techiferous4• 15 years ago

In that case, everyone is a jerk because if we're honest, we've all been rude at least once in our lives. :)

In other words, I find it more helpful to call out specific behavior as inappropriate than to write off the whole person as a "jerk".

corin_5• 15 years ago

I can honestly say I've never been rude to a waiter, taxi driver, shop assistant... etc.

And I certainly wouldn't claim to abide to a higher than average moral standard, I've been rude to my friends and to people I dislike. But not to my colleagues, not to strangers and not to people working indirectly for me (i.e. waiters etc.)

It is quite possible that in the future I might be rude to a waiter, but that would be the exception, not the rule. So yes, it's possible that if you judge someone of a single incident you might have caught the one in a thousand occurrence, chances are against it, far more likely is that you're seeing their normal behaviour.

epynonymous2• 15 years ago

i agree, feedback is king for those that want to improve. delivery of feedback though requires practice.

codeslush• 15 years ago

This story is often repeated in all types of business - it is a really useful tool when recruiting any kind of talent, or, for that matter, any kind of relationship.

It's an absolutely remarkable character test! Useful when dating someone, interviewing someone or any number of other scenarios. It baffles me that people treat others in such a rude and public way - and moreover, it's stunning how frequently it occurs.

icco2• 15 years ago

I generally live by the words "people suck." Then when you see such disgusting behavior as this, it is not surprising.

Even better though, is when you meet truly kind people, it is a surprise and pleasure to work with them.

rewind• 15 years ago

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt, and treat the assholes as outliers. It's too easy to assume the worst, but that's what a lot of people do these days. It's kind of sad.

icco2• 15 years ago

I'll agree that saying "better safe than sorry" is probably the wrong way to view life, but taking what other people say with a grain of salt lets you question what people say more and come to your own decisions about life.

Also, "people suck" includes yourself, so you can think about it as a way to think about what you are saying and doing and see if it is up to a level of quality that you are comfortable with.

Stormbringer• 15 years ago

Along a similar line is one of my favourites: "if you lend a friend $20 and then never see him again, it was money well spent"

newobj• 15 years ago

It also blows hiring. I was eating lunch with the CTO on my interview loop, and he was pitching me hard on the company. He treated the waitress (who gave us perfect service) so poorly that I instantly knew I would never want to work for this guy. Thinking back to every profoundly bad manager I've ever had (not bad in terms of 'ends' but bad in terms of 'means'), they all correlated with crapping on anyone they encountered in the service sector.

random422• 15 years ago

Care to explain what exactly was the CTO's treatment towards the waitress?

Alex3917• 15 years ago

Who are all these people who chronically mistreat the waitstaff? I've been to restaurants with hundreds of different people and I've never seen anyone act abusively towards the servers.

callmeed• 15 years ago

I take it you've never worked in a restaurant ... there are plenty of such people.

noonespecial2• 15 years ago

Don't ever deliver Pizza. Its like COPS but with more yelling and less clothing.

mkramlich• 15 years ago

I'll wager you're in teens or twenties. Go to restaurants long enough, you'll see it.

dspillett2• 15 years ago

I know people who work in retail, and suck people exist. There are not a massive proportion of society buy even a bit of a percent is a lot of people overall. You would might that people out for a nice relaxing meal, or shopping in the middle of a holiday, would be pleasant to deal with: but you'd be wrong. I know a number of people in retail and I can tell you (through indirect experience) that the general public can be unrealistically demanding and completely unpleasant if their demands are not met, repeatedly, yesterday.

By way of an anecdotal example: I know someone whose father thinks there is nothing wrong with clicking his finders and yelling "BOY!" at a waiter to get their attention. Except in Italian places - there it would be "Luigi" rather "boy". I bet he consumes a lot of spit when he goes out for a meal...

For many reasons many people out there are dicks. I might well be one of them if I'm honest with myself, though not one of the worst by a long shot. And if you work in retail or catering you are likely to meet far more than your fair share of them. Remember: most workers in a shops or restaurants deal closely with far more members of the public in a day than most of us encounter closely enough to notice in a year.

stretchwithme• 15 years ago

Its an opportunity for those without much self esteem to exercise power over someone that can't fight back without significant loss. Only dumb people piss off the people handling your food, but there's a big overlap between these two groups.

epynonymous2• 15 years ago

it happens daily in china, it's the norm--it shows who's boss and if you don't do it, you ironically don't gain respect. maybe the angel investor lived in china for a long time? :)

this is an excellent anecdote, lucky the waitress f'd up.

PixelRobot2• 15 years ago

Don't tell everybody. It's a great way to identify people I want to avoid, and you ruin it by telling everybody.

didip• 15 years ago

Don't worry too much about it. Most of the "everybody" don't hang out on Hacker News.

PixelRobot2• 15 years ago

It's more of a "don't go telling people" thing than a "now that it's on Hacker News everybody will know" thing.

kovar• 15 years ago

I do not believe that anyone is saying that you should judge an individual based on one mistake, or one interaction with a waitress. However, the advice is to look at this incident in context, seek out trends (or the lack of trends), and add this to your perception of the individual.

dotBen• 15 years ago

You can also do this with driving. A maxim I once heard was during a deal/hiring/etc process suggest going out for lunch and having the other person drive you both there.

You can learn a lot about a person by the way they drive and they way they eat lunch (esp interacting with service people).

techiferous4• 15 years ago

You should be careful with judging people by how they drive. Cities have different levels of traffic congestion, traffic engineering and expectations. So the driving may say more about the city the driver is from than their personality.

fleitz• 15 years ago

Don't yell at anyone.

Figure out the mistake and help them to correct it. If you're impressed by who someone is and that sort of thing then don't do it because you never know where they will be in 5 months, let alone 5 years.

If you're just a decent person don't do it because it's disrespectful and you bring disrespect to yourself by treating others that way. It also shows you to be out of control with your emotions.

One of the things that struck me most in the past few days was while waiting in line to get into Hipmunk party @ SXSW to see Alexis outside handing out bottles of water. Out of all the people I've met, ideas tossed around for startups, everything @ SXSW, Alexis had the most impact on me in terms of his dedication to helping people out.

huhtenberg• 15 years ago

Also known as the "Swanson's (CEO) waiter test" -

A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter, or to others, is not a nice person.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-04-1...

hammock• 15 years ago

> "We will take over the world together and I will make both of us very rich"

That doesn't sound like a smooth talker, it sounds like a tacky sleazeball. Great story, though.

masterzora• 15 years ago

The title of this bothers me. It suggests that you shouldn't yell at waitresses because it blows investments but, really you should not yell at waitresses and it also happens to blow investments. Don't put on a shoe for people you are doing business; be the person you would pretend to be.

dkl• 15 years ago

How you treat a waitress or janitor says a lot about your personality. IMO, it's an asshole litmus test.

Don't yell at waitresses. You look like a jerk and it blows investments.

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