@rockblossom@unksol Seriously though, I hope you didn’t read my comment as an insult. It was more of a… comment on the sensibility that produces that concept of “tact” represented in customer service.
It may be true or necessary, I don’t know, but I find it intolerably condescending. It means giving up on humanity.
High volume customer service gets to deal with a huge amount of those moments every single day. A little tact, tolerance, manners, whatever you want to call it, go a long ways in greasing the gears of human interaction.
Would you want to be judged solely by the last dumb thing you said?
@blaineg@rockblossom@unksol I do say dumb things, but I always carry some caution and frustration with my inability, in the moment, to gain the perspective I’ll have days later.
In general, if someone offers me some “face saving” white lie, that feels worse than nothing. Obviously I made some error, which is natural enough. Don’t tell me I didn’t. If I say something stupid, let me know, every time. That should be the template we aspire to.
I can read that pamphlet as approximate rules of thumb for how to engage in one side of a cooperative effort to work around utter inadequacy at mass scale – training wheels.
Politics being absolutely off limits, especially in a forum, where people have every opportunity to stop and think, just seems like a demand that, not only do we leave the training wheels on, but we remove the pedals and mount the bike permanently in place.
I’m back to taking that whole… approach, as an expectation that people will reliably fail in the most easily avoidable ways. It’s damning of our species that we always wind up here, to the point where I am, and have been, experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance, from simultaneously believing and being unable to accept it.
@PooltoyWolf Well, at first I saw that HarlemLine.com at the bottom and assumed that was an old railroad company. But I doubt that there were many .com sites when this was written (what would you guess, late 1940’s?)
@mehcuda67 Research shows it’s likely promotional material from the New York & Harlem Railroad, specifically their passenger operations, and likely was a bulletin of sorts for railroad employees. (I assume whatever might be left of the NY&H is likely part of Metro-North now)
Your date estimate is probably pretty close. I’d say 30s or 40s. Much past that, and it would have been absorbed into the New York Central.
This is a terrific article - long, but refreshing to read. I’m pretty polarized in my political views, to the point that I don’t like to discuss them because it feels futile, but I would prefer to have the attitude these people have. Of course, discussing politics online is one of the things cited as NOT helpful.
We have now entered the peculiar netherworld of posts which mention politics, but do not specifically discuss actual politics.
This is acceptable. Everyone can hate on the concept of political threads, without actually hating on each other…
Political discussions online are the most useless things ever invented.
@krock1 You say that like you have some sort of right to say it.
@mike808
Well I guess it lasted a bit before the insults started
@unksol It was a school day. They had to get off the bus and have their snacks before being allowed on the computer.
@rockblossom @unksol Seriously though, I hope you didn’t read my comment as an insult. It was more of a… comment on the sensibility that produces that concept of “tact” represented in customer service.
It may be true or necessary, I don’t know, but I find it intolerably condescending. It means giving up on humanity.
@InnocuousFarmer @rockblossom @unksol I look at it more like this: think of some of the dumb things you’ve done or said.
High volume customer service gets to deal with a huge amount of those moments every single day. A little tact, tolerance, manners, whatever you want to call it, go a long ways in greasing the gears of human interaction.
Would you want to be judged solely by the last dumb thing you said?
@blaineg @rockblossom @unksol I do say dumb things, but I always carry some caution and frustration with my inability, in the moment, to gain the perspective I’ll have days later.
In general, if someone offers me some “face saving” white lie, that feels worse than nothing. Obviously I made some error, which is natural enough. Don’t tell me I didn’t. If I say something stupid, let me know, every time. That should be the template we aspire to.
I can read that pamphlet as approximate rules of thumb for how to engage in one side of a cooperative effort to work around utter inadequacy at mass scale – training wheels.
Politics being absolutely off limits, especially in a forum, where people have every opportunity to stop and think, just seems like a demand that, not only do we leave the training wheels on, but we remove the pedals and mount the bike permanently in place.
I’m back to taking that whole… approach, as an expectation that people will reliably fail in the most easily avoidable ways. It’s damning of our species that we always wind up here, to the point where I am, and have been, experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance, from simultaneously believing and being unable to accept it.
That’s a neat little piece of railroadiana history. I wonder what railroad company put it out?
@PooltoyWolf Well, at first I saw that HarlemLine.com at the bottom and assumed that was an old railroad company. But I doubt that there were many .com sites when this was written (what would you guess, late 1940’s?)
@mehcuda67 Research shows it’s likely promotional material from the New York & Harlem Railroad, specifically their passenger operations, and likely was a bulletin of sorts for railroad employees. (I assume whatever might be left of the NY&H is likely part of Metro-North now)
Your date estimate is probably pretty close. I’d say 30s or 40s. Much past that, and it would have been absorbed into the New York Central.
@PooltoyWolf nerd
@PooltoyWolf @unksol
/giphy awesome nerd
DIPLOMAT! RAT-A-TAT! FAT CAT! AWESOME!
@unksol Thank you uwu
/image and we’re off to the comments
@mike808 I’ve actually posted in comments’ sections “note to self, don’t read the comments…DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!”
@mehcuda67 I’m allergic to cats.
@Kyser_Soze Me too.
Or: coddle people like big dumb babies, because that is what they are.
@InnocuousFarmer I know you are, but what am I?
@blaineg … ergh,
Dummy!
This is a terrific article - long, but refreshing to read. I’m pretty polarized in my political views, to the point that I don’t like to discuss them because it feels futile, but I would prefer to have the attitude these people have. Of course, discussing politics online is one of the things cited as NOT helpful.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/watertown-new-york-tops-scale-political-tolerance/582106/
@Kyeh thanks for the link. You are correct. It’s a long read, but good info. Some of the statistics are quite surprising.
@chienfou Yeah, I thought so too.