[HN Gopher] The 5% Rule
___________________________________________________________________
The 5% Rule
Author : jppope
Score : 152 points
Date : 2022-12-31 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jonpauluritis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jonpauluritis.com)
| dataangel wrote:
| [flagged]
| NegativeK wrote:
| I've downvoted you for tossing out insulting feedback without
| any practical criticism.
|
| And for trying to prop up OP's 5% stat.
| jppope wrote:
| (OP) I started the blog in ~2009. I'm a fan of OpenAI's work...
| but I don't use it for my blog.
| the-anarchist wrote:
| [flagged]
| osigurdson wrote:
| In my experience, it is more like a 0.5% rule.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Normal distribution (probability theory) 5% of anything will be
| outliers.
| einpoklum wrote:
| 5% of encounters != 5% of people. In fact, even if the poster
| tried marketing to the same people at different times, he might
| well have gotten a different 5%. Some correlation, for sure, but
| still. Not to mention how encounters are a binary thing - another
| person might get a different 5%.
|
| Also, the samples he's talking about are not really uniformly
| distributed over the world's population (i.e. "people"), nor even
| people in the USA.
| killthebuddha wrote:
| In my experience people who express this kind of view (a
| slightly-sweeping, slightly-cynical take on the prevalence of
| shitty people) also tend to be epistemically overconfident of
| their grasp on social situations. For example, my opinion of the
| following quote is that it sounds contrived (Not contrived for
| the blog post, but contrived in the sense that the "brought the
| hair with her" hypothesis is itself contrived).
|
| > My experience serving/bartending in restaurants was the same...
| As an example: one time a lady threw a huge fit about a 2-3 inch
| smooth brown hair being in her meal when her server was a blond
| girl and the entire kitchen staff were 35+ year-old Mexicans/
| African Americans with completely shaved heads. Now I'm not
| saying this woman brought the hair into the restaurant and
| planted it in her meal... but I know for a fact it couldn't have
| been from any of our staff in the restaurant, so you can make
| your own decision.
|
| My take is that there's less shitty people and more shitty
| Bayesians :)
| msrenee wrote:
| So if I found a hair in my meal, I'd let my server know. It's
| gross, but it happens This woman found a hair in her meal and
| threw a fit. Whether she planted it or not (which is definitely
| a thing people do), she was not being reasonable in that
| situation.
| killthebuddha wrote:
| I agree she was being unreasonable. The article claims that
| 3%-5% of people are "terrible" and "just wanted to be mean,
| nasty, selfish brutes" and the quote I used was used by the
| author as evidence for that claim. The author takes a
| situation where someone was being unreasonable and then
| throws in a hypothesis based on tenuous reasoning.
| msrenee wrote:
| I mentioned it in a comment elsewhere in the discussion,
| but I've got one coworker who is just a terrible person,
| another that treats others terribly when he isn't getting
| his way, and used to have a third who would treat his
| reports like crap if they didn't worship the ground he
| walked on. I've got a couple family members who are just
| unabashedly nasty to everyone. There's a couple more who
| are just awful to service workers because they think
| they're lesser for the work they do. Those are just the
| people I have to directly deal with on a regular basis.
|
| The author apparently logged the number of people who were
| jerks over the course of a given time and and that's how
| they came up with the numbers they used. Whether those
| people are awful all of the time, who knows. I know there's
| a number of people in my life who are just terrible people
| all of the time. Of course, they think they're the nicest
| people in the world and are the victims in every situation.
|
| The lesson in the article is to be decent to everyone and
| if someone's nasty in return, ignore it and focus on the
| people you can help. The numbers aren't necessarily the
| point, but from my experience, it's a reasonable estimate.
| ajaimk wrote:
| Only 5%? That gives me hope for humanity.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Depends on how much those 5% procreate compared to others.
| NateEag wrote:
| Should be quite a lot, evolutionarily speaking.
|
| Being a horrible manipulative jerk seems like a great
| reproduction strategy to me.
|
| On average women will see through you and won't give you the
| time of day. Some will fall for your terrible abusive
| manipulation, though.
|
| They get impregnated and you move on. Your victims will on
| average have the usual mothering instincts and will do their
| best to help their kid make it. Eventually, that should
| result in you generating many offspring.
|
| I hope this strategy isn't conscious on anyone's part, but it
| sounds like one evolution would reward.
|
| I hope someone can show me a fatal flaw in my reasoning.
| tck42 wrote:
| This assumes that it is a heritable trait. My anecdotal
| experience leads me to doubt that.
| euroderf wrote:
| Do those 5% vote in each and every primary election ?
| Kamq wrote:
| No, they run in them.
| eCa wrote:
| > That gives me hope for humanity.
|
| As long as there are less than nineteen people in the pool...
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'm not exactly sure if that should or not.
|
| There have been any number of leaders that have been horrible
| people and yet the average normal people excuse their
| behaviors, and some even buy into their behaviors.
| thewebcount wrote:
| While I'm sure this is a real problem, I've been on the other
| side of this equation where you've tried your level best to get a
| problem resolved, and not only haven't had it resolved, but have
| been repeatedly screwed even more.
|
| For example, many years ago, I signed up for a landline phone
| (when that's all there was), and signed up for a particular
| special service that Ameritech was offering that would allow me
| to have a computer on a modem running 24/7 without getting
| unreasonable charges. Eventually, I get the first bill and it's
| charging me the regular rate. I sigh and call them. They agree
| it's their mistake and they'll fix it to remove the charge and it
| will be reflected in the next bill. It isn't. I go around in
| circles for 6 months, with my bill increasing to thousands of
| dollars. Finally I call them up and just start screaming at
| someone, and that is what finally got it fixed.
|
| I'm not proud to have done that, but sometimes it's the only
| option. The person I was yelling at wasn't the one who caused the
| problem or lied to me, but I didn't know of any other options at
| the time. (I was raised by wolves, it turns out.) And,
| ultimately, it worked.
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| You mentioned Ameritech, which reminded me of Amerispec:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xtgH74hh6pQ
| owenpalmer wrote:
| Haha! Always a classic!
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| You are talking about the same problem. 3-5% customers are
| terrible and so are the 3-5% service personnel
| teawrecks wrote:
| Assuming they called back every month for 6mo and always got
| a rep in that 3-5%, that's some supremely bad luck...
|
| ...unless call center support is a biased sample.
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| I think it's more than 5% on the service personnel side.
| Customers are a more reliable random sample than service
| personnel, who are likely to not like their jobs in the first
| place.
| gist wrote:
| No this should not be correct (that is if you are assuming
| the 3-5% rules is correct and I'm not saying it is). The
| people who work for companies are vetted by the company so in
| theory the percentage of people who are bad would have to in
| theory be less simply because of that filter. The people a
| company (or someone is dealing with) is unfiltered hence the
| probability in theory again should be higher.
| Taywee wrote:
| Some percentage of managers, including hiring managers,
| will also suck, and these can make crappy employees out of
| people who otherwise have potential to be good.
| motoxpro wrote:
| I think the rule applies in both directions.
| kshacker wrote:
| Speaking in colloquial English, basically 5% of time, you
| have to say : Enough is enough, I have had it with these MF
| snakes on this MF plane :)
| sodapopcan wrote:
| None of the examples given in the article make me think it
| would consider screaming at a representative of a company
| that's wrongfully cost you thousands of dollars after you've
| spent months trying to rectify it as part of the "5%". That's
| totally reasonable, even if it want directly the
| representative's fault. Screaming at a service worker because
| of a hair in your food isn't--that's psychotic.
| IanCal wrote:
| No, screaming at a worker whose job is to answer the phones
| is not reasonable. It shouldn't have cost them anything
| either - you shouldn't be paying incorrect bills.
|
| Had they filed official complaints? Gone to any regulator?
| Had the issue escalated?
| sodapopcan wrote:
| The OP clearly said they tried for months and stated they
| did not feel good about being pushed past their limit, so
| yes, I'm assuming they tried less extreme solutions over
| those months.
|
| Otherwise, I agree with you. I'm trying to say it's
| psychotic for your _primary_ reaction to be rage.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I will say that I have since grown and become more
| emotionally intelligent and am far less likely to do that
| now. My comment about being raised by wolves was intended
| to convey that I was brought up poorly and not taught how
| to handle myself in situations like this without yelling.
|
| > Had they filed official complaints? Gone to any
| regulator? Had the issue escalated?
|
| At the time I wouldn't have known how to file an official
| complaint or even that there were regulators who could do
| anything. What fixed it was that my screaming got it
| escalated to an appropriate person who could actually do
| something. I didn't know the term "escalate" in that
| context at that time, and customers shouldn't have to know
| how customer support works to get things escalated. That
| should have just happened when I described the problem the
| 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th times.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Miss Manners reported her newspaper delivery going astray
| and calling the paper. The nice man told her "We don't do
| anything about that, unless the caller is really angry."
|
| She asked if he would put her down as being irate, and he
| agreed. Her newspaper delivery resumed.
|
| So yes there are other ways :)
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Yes, this was my question. Are 3-5% of people horrible all the
| time, or are we all horrible 3-5% of the time? Or more likely
| at any given time 3-5% of us are horrible, with some of us
| entering the group more often than others.
| msrenee wrote:
| Off the top of my head, I can think of a half dozen people
| I've known who are just horrible all of the time. Nasty to
| their family, nasty to coworkers, nasty to strangers. I can
| think of another half dozen who are just in the habit of
| mistreating service workers.
|
| Some people you're just catching on a bad day, but there is
| definitely a portion of the population that are just crappy
| people.
| switchbak wrote:
| Disagreeable personalities are definitely a thing, and some
| have some other stuff stacked on top that can make for
| persistently unreasonable people.
|
| Off the top of my head I knew someone who had a really hard
| loss that they couldn't cope with, and you could basically
| just see them reeling it in all the time, and that was
| expressed outwardly as anger. Really tragic situation
| though, and if you didn't know the details you'd just
| assume they're a raging prick.
|
| I find it hard to mine compassion when I don't know
| someone's backstory, and I usually default to filling in
| the details with some kind of dismissive story about them
| just being self centered and belligerent (probably true
| some of the time though). I find life goes better when I
| try to fill in the blanks with some kind of reasoning that
| would explain that behaviour better (while still not
| excusing it).
| jpswade wrote:
| Surely it's more time based too, the ebb and flow of people
| sucking at different times has to be a factor. Not even 5% suck
| 100% of the time. There's no way that 95% of people don't suck
| 100% of the time either.
|
| Are we saying that 5 in 100 people will suck. If so think that's
| an underestimate.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Some people suck all of the time.
|
| Most people suck some of the time.
|
| But almost nobody sucks none of the time.
| lp4vn wrote:
| Even though I agree that there is probably a fixed porcentage of
| bastards in the world's population, I think 5% is a too high
| number. That's one in twenty and I don't think I will find one in
| twenty people who are the classical bastard in the groups of
| people I interact with.
|
| I think it's more like 2-3% in my very subjective experience, of
| course.
|
| I also think that the setting matters a lot. If you are in a very
| competitive environment, like the author in the article, maybe
| the circumstances push the number to 5%, but if you are in a
| relaxed, friendly setting, I think the percentage might lower to
| 1-2%.
| el_nahual wrote:
| Implications for parenting:
|
| If your kids grade is ~100 people, five parents will be absolute
| pieces of shit.
|
| Figure out who these are and avoid at all costs.
| scrivna wrote:
| Most kids have 2 parents, so possibly higher!
| Zanni wrote:
| Related, from Scott Alexander: Lizardman's Constant is 4%:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Many laws, company policies, etc exist to prevent those 5% from
| causing damage to the rest of the population. So 95% of people
| have to live with restrictions and bureaucracy that merely exists
| for those small group.
| akira2501 wrote:
| That might be the wrong way to look at it, or rather, it
| doesn't take into consideration the natural minimum.
|
| It may be that just 5% of people will continue to break the
| rules _despite_ the bureaucracy.
|
| So, how many of the 95% are following the rules _because_ of
| the bureaucracy? I suspect it's much higher than most people
| would care to admit.. just look what happens when the system or
| enforcement mechanisms break down.
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Live with" is a weird framing, isn't it? If we accept the
| claim for a moment, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that
| the restrictions exist to give the 95% the best chance at a
| reasonable, unmolested life?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yes - at the price of restrictions that apply to all of us,
| not just to the 5%. The powers that be are trying to tune the
| restrictions to some kind of global maximum of organizational
| output. Rules hinder that - they slow you down. But the lack
| of rules increases the damage that the 5% can cause, which
| _also_ slows you down.
|
| The hard part is, when something causes damage, it's easy to
| make a rule, but harder to see that the rule will cost more
| than the damage.
| Nevermark wrote:
| Yes, but the balance point of restricted/unmolested has to
| move further into restriction territory to account for
| intransigent vs. bad-day molesters
|
| A higher level optimality can be achieved wherever truly
| nasty people can be pre-screened out of situations
| nine_k wrote:
| What's weird about daily life?
|
| 100 - e percent of the population have to lock their cars and
| homes so that the e percent of people won't steal or
| vandalize their property. The e may be small, but while e >
| 0, they can deal disproportionate damage unless everyone
| implements restrictions.
| LastTrain wrote:
| I'm not following. What are some specific sacrifices we have to
| make for the sake of the five percent?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Speed limits, building codes, the list goes on and on an on.
| And of course the wealth of society is sapped to pay for
| enforcement of all this stuff. Pretty much all civil
| regulation and the associated enforcement costs could be
| scaled way way way back if the single digit percentage of
| people who really suck didn't or the low double digit
| percentage of people who really get bent out of shape over
| these people got somewhat over it.
| jyap wrote:
| Taking your shoes off for TSA
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Ever get approved for a home loan? Much of that laborious
| process is to thwart fraud committed by a small percent of
| people. If everyone was trustable on good faith, computers
| could do most of the work almost instantaneously.
|
| How about the entire organized crime bureaus of police forces
| worldwide?
| Animats wrote:
| Maybe there's a market for a list of such people.
|
| Maybe Google or Facebook already has such a list for internal
| use. All that data mining ought to yield one.
| thewebcount wrote:
| That sounds like a social credit, which sounds dystopian to me.
| gist wrote:
| My experience confirms the general concept here (the number at 5%
| is arbitrary I'd place it higher than that). The point is (and I
| have found this to be true) if you deal with enough people you
| will hit on people who have let's say issues and do not think
| clearly or even close to rationally and there is simply no
| pleasing them. So for business the idea that you need all of your
| customers to be happy is simply not going to work. That is what I
| have found in actual practice over many many years.
|
| Separate point when you are starting out in some business the
| easiest and first customers you get are the ones that nobody else
| wants or gives bad service to because they are irrational and
| unreasonable. (Keep that point in mind..)
|
| There is an example with Zappos of someone being able to spend an
| entire day pleasing one customer. That is entirely unreasonable
| and except for the story and publicity value of that event makes
| no sense at all since anyone who wants to spend that much of your
| time is not going to be a customer that you (probably) want long
| term. At a certain point you simply have to (in business or life)
| walk away.
|
| https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2016/07/118020/zappos-custo...
| MBCook wrote:
| This is based on observations up to 2013.
|
| We've had two big societal changes since then that seemed to make
| things worse to me, the latest being Covid.
|
| I really wonder if that 5% would be noticeably higher today.
| KerryJones wrote:
| I wish I had more data on it, but I've seen many different
| sources saying the same thing, but the number has more closely
| approximated 2.5% here, and so I'm wondering if there is
| discrepancy, or this is within the range of statistical accuracy
| of one or both.
| jppope wrote:
| (OP) its hard to have an exact percentage because it's (crude)
| observation - I could totally go with 2.5%. The number is in
| the low single digits for sure, but definitely higher than a
| rounding error (or a null-hypothesis). Whatever the number is,
| it's high enough to impact the people that have to interact
| with lots of other people - they feel it, which is really what
| I was getting at.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| trmpacctmd wrote:
| I've seen people who are very nice and one context be very not
| nice in another.
|
| As an example, try being a medical doctor on HN. The toxic few
| are why I stopped posting about medical things here.
|
| I'm not saying those responders are generally mean people. I
| think they're normal people who for whatever reason feel wronged
| and are part of my world's 5%.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| The silly thing is to assume that since you had a bad experience
| with someone they are like this all the time. When you work
| sales, some people will enter your store on the day they got
| dumped, their family member died, they got kicked out of school.
| You never know why people are acting out. Chances are it's
| nothing about you.
|
| Other cases, it might not be the person's first time in the
| store. If they tried several times to fix a problem they are
| frustrated and and angry. I've had this happen to me multiple
| times and no matter how patient and nice the representative is,
| it doesn't change the fact I've wasted way too much time on this
| problem and you can't make me happy. Even if you solve my
| problem, it will not make up the lost time and energy.
|
| The only thing I'd recommend is to try and be more empathetic.
| You never know what the person has been through. If you think
| they suck and you see them at their worst, they could probably
| use some empathy.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The silly thing is to assume that since you had a bad
| experience with someone they are like this all the time.
|
| The post mentions doctors and seems to indicate that they would
| put a higher percentage of humans in the 'terrible' category.
|
| Add stress and people act poorly. There also seems to be a
| thing where people can't always articulate what they are
| feeling (eg a specific phobia they have) and act out in
| response to the stress.
|
| Once the stress has gone they are different people.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I also think that more than 5% of people
| are terrible.
|
| I work in healthcare as a radiographer.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| The old adage: 'The customer is always right' which means a
| business should always have the best interests of customers at
| heart and always assume good faith, has turned on its head. Now
| customers have weaponized that old adage and presume an air of
| ugly hubris and are mean spirited because hey, 'The customer is
| always right'. Eh no, sometimes the customer is an asshole.
| swader999 wrote:
| If you are tight on staff or other inputs, you are wise to
| 'fire' your worst customers.
| stocknoob wrote:
| I've always took it as "the customer is always right in matters
| of taste".
|
| If customers keep asking for green shirts with red polka dots,
| you sell green shirts with red polka dots, even if you don't
| like them.
| Bjartr wrote:
| > which means a business should always have the best interests
| of customers at heart and always assume good faith
|
| I thought it meant, at least originally, that a customer's
| choice to shop, or not, at your store needs to be treated as
| your failure to attract the customer, not the customer's
| failure for making the "wrong" choice.
| WallyFunk wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_always_right
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_customer_is_not_a_moron
| dcanelhas wrote:
| Sounds like an independent study on the prevalence of psychopathy
| in the general adult population (4.5%)
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6610...
| plugin-baby wrote:
| > As an example: one time a lady threw a huge fit about a 2-3
| inch smooth brown hair being in her meal when her server was a
| blond girl and the entire kitchen staff were 35+ year-old
| Mexicans/ African Americans with completely shaved heads. Now I'm
| not saying this woman brought the hair into the restaurant and
| planted it in her meal... but I know for a fact it couldn't have
| been from any of our staff in the restaurant, so you can make
| your own decision.
|
| Check the author's photo!
| euroderf wrote:
| About interviews. Take the candidate to lunch and observe how
| s/he interacts with the wait staff.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Whether it's from the kitchen staff or waiter is kind of
| irrelevant; throwing a "huge fit" is ridiculous regardless.
| Kitchen staff make mistakes all the time because it's hard work
| with a lot of pressure. You deal with it by saying "sorry to be
| a bother, but I'm afraid there's a mistake" and that should
| solve it. No fits needed. (Of course, we have just one side of
| the story and it could be that the staff was rude or dismissive
| after she politely pointed this out, so we'll never be able to
| judge this specific incident; but people exploding over minor
| things is something I've experienced as well when I worked in
| retail).
| jppope wrote:
| (OP) valid observation, but I was behind the bar...
| ipaddr wrote:
| It could easily be from another customer. Smoking guns are
| rare.
| hoppla wrote:
| He said it was a blonde waiter and bald chefs, author probably
| had nothing to do with the food at all...
| darig wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Related: 2% of people respond to oxytocin differently and are
| just "bastards" no matter what.
|
| https://www.hugthemonkey.com/2007/03/paul_zak_oxytoc.html
| metadat wrote:
| A very interesting hypothesis! I chose to submit this, hope you
| don't mind too much :)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34201142
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| Delighted to have it discussed more!
| woodruffw wrote:
| The other possible sampling (which doesn't contradict the
| author's lived experience!) is that there are is a _tiny_
| fraction of uniformly nasty individuals, and a _substantially
| larger_ (maybe even majority) of individuals who are nasty at
| individual points in time.
| flashgordon wrote:
| I wonder if you turn this around, could every body have a
| tendency to be nasty 5% of the time?
| theamk wrote:
| I don't think so? 5% is more than half hour of your awake time,
| every day. Or few hours of "nasty time" every week.
|
| If this was a general rule, it would be easily noticeable, and
| I haven't seen this in people I interact with.
| macNchz wrote:
| This definitely explains a portion of these "nasty encounters",
| but I think only a very small portion. The majority of people
| will at least attempt to be gracious even if they're having a
| really bad day.
|
| Riffing off of the author's restaurant example: at the
| restaurant I worked at in college there were "known nasty"
| regulars. They were just...always horrible to the waitstaff.
| The hosts knew not to seat them in the veteran servers'
| sections, so I often dealt with them.
|
| If they did happen to get seated in someone else's section,
| they'd get pawned off. Even the one waitress on the team who
| was constantly hustling to work every last table/shift/upsell
| she could manage would hand them off to me and let me keep the
| tip (if there was one...), rather than having to interact with
| them herself.
| ronyeh wrote:
| I think it's possible. I feel like even the most normal people
| can have an off day when they just want to be assholes to
| people for whatever reason. (I've personally done this, and
| later regretted.) So maybe the sales folks or bartenders are
| seeing those people on their off days.
| maxerickson wrote:
| 5% of the time though? That's gonna be several regrettable
| incidents a month.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yeah. Been there, done that, trying to keep it well under 5%.
|
| But that's different. There are people who are nasty more
| like 50% of the time, or maybe even 95%. It's good to
| recognize that yes, that's me some of the time, but "quantity
| has a quality all its own", as Stalin (allegedly?) said. Too
| much of that attitude and/or behavior puts you in a different
| category.
|
| And even for people in that category, it's also important to
| realize that they have their 5% - or even 50% - where they
| aren't like that. That doesn't make you want to hang around
| them - even 50% jerk is too much for me to want to spend time
| with them - but still recognize that the other part is there,
| and appreciate it when you see it.
| flashgordon wrote:
| Ah I should have added wilfully nasty. The article I thought
| mentioned discarding "bad days". But then again are the
| malicious truly aware and holding themselves accountable for
| their maliciousness instead l just pointing to external
| circumstances.
| ta988 wrote:
| This roughly matches my estimate of evil drivers on the road,
| people cutting lines violently and not using turning lights,
| pushing to insert on the right when they used the emergency lane
| to pass everybody in a slowdown...
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| If you smell shit all day look under your own shoe.
|
| You've listed a few really bad behaviors and then used a bunch
| of weasel word language to imply a bunch of casual minor rule
| breaking is equivalent to its worst case forms. No wonder you
| see bad drivers everywhere.
|
| The guy who's not using his blinker for a lane change on the
| freeway in light traffic isn't equivalent to the guy weaving
| through traffic without blinkers and even then is the blinker
| really the problem there?
|
| Riding in the breakdown lane to pass someone isn't equivalent
| to getting tin the breakdown lane for a couple dozen feet
| coming up to a light just prior to the creation of a dedicated
| turn lane in the same space.
|
| If you didn't get bent out of shape over technical rule
| violations that are fairly reasonable in context you'd see a
| lot less bad drivers.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think it's way less than that. We just got back from a ~1600
| mile round-trip to visit family plus a week's worth of
| incidental driving around town to buy groceries and visit other
| family nearby.
|
| On the highway segments, most cars were just trundling along
| between 2 and 20 mph over the limit, generally keeping
| reasonably to themselves. When an obstacle appeared on the
| roadside (stopped motorist, police, other), people flexed to
| let other cars get left and then returned to normal driving.
|
| Sure, I noticed a few people driving aggressively, following
| too closely, changing lanes excessively to squeak out one or
| two extra spots, but that was perhaps 50 cars at the very most
| in 1600 miles of driving. 1 or 2 per hour, not 1 per 20.
| lullab wrote:
| Maybe aggressive drivers don't drive aggressively all the
| time making you mistankenly assume they are good drivers?
| sokoloff wrote:
| If they are not detectably different from good drivers,
| doesn't that make them good drivers?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| I think there's more variables to it than that. It's
| absolutely possible to create aggressive drivers out of
| thin air if you annoy everyone around you enough. I used to
| drive commercial equipment that simply couldn't keep up
| with normal traffic. Needless to say when you are a rolling
| obstruction you see a ton of "aggressive" drivers because
| "normal" drivers do aggressive stuff rather than get stuck
| behind you. I can't imagine how bad it would be if I were
| driving like that in a vehicle that didn't very visibly
| have an excuse to be acting that way.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| The aggressive drivers I personally know are always
| aggressive.
| pixl97 wrote:
| In theory the vast majority of your long road trip is going
| to be on wide open areas with low enough traffic volumes that
| there is no point of contention.
|
| Add in heavy traffic and the number of negative interactions
| will go up. Then remember you tend to roll with the traffic
| in these situations that lower the total number of people
| you're subjected to.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Why attribute poor driving behavior to intent/malice when most
| of it can be adequately explained by gross stupidity?
|
| People can be just plain dumb.
| shahbaby wrote:
| Always wished I had a name for this. There is a certain "type" of
| person that thrives on being mean spirited.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think this is true, but the way I would put it is:
|
| While you have influence over 95% of what happens to you, you can
| only really survive the other 5%. Take solace in the fact that,
| sometimes, when it seems like there's nothing you can do - you
| are right! That said, often the path to self-improvement is in
| situations we've misunderstood as "we can't effect" and are
| actually caused by us.
| jppope wrote:
| well said. great observation. thank you for the comment
| LanceH wrote:
| My dad phrased it this way, talking about running into this
| kind of person in the military, "Sometimes you run across an
| asshole, and there's nothing you can do about it until you or
| he moves along."
| gizmo wrote:
| In 20 years of dealing with customers I've had to deal with maybe
| 3 people who were real jerks. Maybe my experience is unusual, but
| my customers come from all over the world. Rich countries, poor
| countries, non-profits, startups to fortune 500. Practically
| everybody is friendly and respectful.
|
| Occasionally people are irritable or upset, but I don't take it
| at all personally. I just assume they're having a bad day or that
| they're angry for valid reasons I just don't know. When people
| figure out you actually want to help them the anger dissipates
| immediately.
|
| Verizon treats their customers with contempt as a business
| practice, and when you call their support the phone operators are
| not authorized to actually resolve your issue anyway. So yeah,
| that makes people angry. They would leave if they could, but
| where would they go? AT&T? It's a racket.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Verizon treats their customers with contempt as a business
| practice
|
| I agree, but with actual support technicians at Verizon I've
| actually had pretty decent, even above average interactions.
| The company itself does things I detest, but I try not to take
| it out on the people answering the phone.
| semireg wrote:
| I handle 100% of my indie app's email and telephone (yes,
| telephone!) support. My app is designing/printing labels.
| Printers in general, and label printers specifically are awful
| and inconsiderate robots, unable to perform the simplest printing
| job when you need it most.
|
| Sure, 2-5% of my users are nasty/mean, but let me tell you a
| little secret: They are immensely frustrated with their life
| situation and they know how simple the solution should be. If you
| can show them the light, if you can "flip" these users, they will
| become your most loyal customers.
|
| I start by telling them, "Hey, every month I get a call like
| yours where you are so frustrated you want to scream, and let me
| tell you a secret, if I got a call every day like this... I'd
| quit this business, but calls like yours are rare and I want to
| help you through this."
|
| Boom. They're listening, and they're often listening to advice
| they don't want to hear. What kind of advice? Oh... like, "you
| will have to work through this and tweak the measurements until
| it works, because some printer drivers are mysterious and
| terrible. But once you get it, you'll be rewarded with it working
| for a long time until you have to buy a new printer."
|
| Still, 50/1000 seems high to me, I like to think I earn the trust
| of 90% of my nasty/mean customers. Sometimes I'm lucky and I just
| paste a URL to a FAQ. After 4 years in business I had my first
| person hang up on me because they kept demanding a simple answer
| and I would say, "sorry, it's more complicated than that, I don't
| have a simple answer... I just have two complex answers that
| contradict each other until you can choose which one is the
| lesser of two evils."
|
| It could be a book that no one would read: Zen and the Art of
| Label Printing
|
| A quick video of my app Label LIVE, narrated by yours truly:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnqUP1CZd24
| roflyear wrote:
| I did tech support for a few years and probably answered 100k
| calls or so. I would estimate that less than 1% of people were
| unreasonable. 2-3% were mean people. 80% were kind. It's a hard
| job and you have to focus on the good.
| anodari wrote:
| Yes, tech support can be difficult and it seems like your
| statistics are similar to ours. We receive around 5,000
| support tickets per day and we simply cannot satisfy
| everyone. Sometimes we have to "fire" a customer who becomes
| disrespectful towards one of our attendants.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| My experience (e-commerce) is similar to this.
|
| A lot of people contact support half-expecting that they'll get
| fucked around, and you see a complete 180 in their tone as soon
| as you offer a decent solution to their problem.
|
| Of course, there are still those people who just want an excuse
| to be a cunt (maybe 1% or less, from my experience). I don't
| push them too hard to reach a solution, and just graciously
| accept the money they've paid me as an admission fee for what
| they actually wanted - an excuse to feel righteous when they
| smear shit on the walls.
| pcurve wrote:
| you have great voice and annunciation. They go long way!
| rashidae wrote:
| So true. I take this as an aid towards my customer support
| approach. I guess it's a good idea to include a slide on the
| onboarding process where we mention this and give some tips into
| how to deal with this in the most respectful, yet decisive way.
| falcolas wrote:
| It's perhaps worth noting that in excess of 5% of the populace
| have one form of mental disability or another.
|
| ADHD alone is estimated to be a disorder present in 5% of the
| adult population (2% are currently diagnosed; the 5% is based off
| childhood diagnosis rates and the fact it usually doesn't go away
| when becoming an adult).
|
| And while those with ADHD are unlikely to populate the OP's 5%,
| those with pathological narcissistic, sociopathic, schizophrenic
| (and other) disorders very well could.
| axiolite wrote:
| Except those disorders don't often translate to people acting
| terribly towards acquaintances. Sociopaths may be the nicest
| people you've ever met, if and when they want something from
| you. Schizophrenics may be various levels of detached from
| reality and perhaps difficult in that way, but only a tiny
| fraction of a percentage are so unhinged that they would act
| abusive or destructive.
|
| There just isn't a large enough population of mentally ill with
| symptoms that would manifest as described to make up 5%, though
| they surely make up some part of it.
| frellus wrote:
| Spot on. It's a shame that we haven't prioritized (and de-
| stigmatized) mental health, especially at a young age, so
| horrible children don't grow up to be horrible ego-centric
| adults.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Arguably these kind of personality disorders aren't really
| "mental health" issues. Or, certainly not in the same way
| that something like ADD, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety,
| etc. are. It's basically a nice way of saying "your
| personality sucks so much that we've decided to label it".
| frellus wrote:
| I disagree, I believe they are mental health issues because
| they're highlighting a process breakdown in how someone is
| perceiving the world, relationships and challenges.
|
| Is that to say that people don't have personalities which
| suck? Of course they do. That being said, there are many
| ways of balancing a person's tendencies towards negative
| outcomes, but _ONLY_ if they can admit they have a problem
| and they 're willing to put in the effort to re-balancing
| themselves.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| This probably also raises if you incorporate people who were
| traumatized as children. Someone having a trauma response can
| definitely look like horrible ego-centric behavior, when
| actually they're having an internal meltdown where they're
| emotionally re-experiencing their trauma with no coping
| mechanisms because we basically never teach adults to
| recognize when this is happening.
|
| A lot of hyper-toxic fiddly freakouts over small things
| actually turn out to be deeply rooted in some sort of
| horrible trauma.
| frellus wrote:
| Absolutely agreed, and I hate to sound like a Scientologist
| here, but I think a lot of people's struggles have roots in
| some trauma in their past. We're all shaped by bad things
| which happen to us, and for some people -- the ones
| especially with low Emotional Intelligence -- they can be
| re-balanced quite a bit in their thinking and patterns but
| _ONLY_ if they 're willing. That's like 80% the battle.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| This has been my experience as well. I, too, have met and talked
| to thousands of people from every possible background on seven
| different continents of this world. From the poorest people on
| Earth to some of the richest.
|
| I've seen the same thing. About 5% are nasty and about 1% are
| truly bad people who commit horrible crimes.
| tomrod wrote:
| Makes me wonder if the distribution is independent of other
| personality and socioeconomic factors.
|
| Much earlier in life I helped recruit for a cult (much has
| changed since then). 3% - 5% seems on the high side for people
| who "just suck" -- perhaps by an order of magnitude. But
| perhaps the "just sucks" is context dependent. I found early on
| the FORD bulletpoints makes it pretty simple to start smalltalk
| (Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams/Desires).
| kshacker wrote:
| Saying this from my personal experience [ workspace related not
| familial ] : What happens is that some of these bad people have
| charisma, can make you follow them, for their ulterior motives.
| So if you get trapped in that circle, because you tolerated for
| so long, you probably did not get to experience the 5% bad, but
| maybe 20% bad over your lifetime. So my lesson there is ...
| walk. You recognize a problem, you walk, rather than try to fix
| it. Of course you should give a chance, but that is it - just
| one chance and then none.
| andreyk wrote:
| "between the years of 2009 and 2013, I talked to something like
| 13,000 to 15,000 people while I was doing retail and SMB sales
| for Verizon. I learned a lot from that period, but one of the
| things I learned that I did not expect was what I now call my "5%
| rule."
|
| No matter how kind, warm, thoughtful, amazing, cheerful,
| consistent, and perfect I treated people roughly 5% of them would
| just be terrible (yes, I have the numbers to back this) ... this
| number has held up in other parts of my life too (dating,
| restaurant customers, etc).
|
| ...
|
| the take here - 3% to 5% of people for whatever reason just plain
| suck."
|
| Sounds easy enough to believe. Of course, social conventions and
| so on influence such things, these people are not always terrible
| - I am not sure I buy the latter part of the thesis. I certainly
| haven't had this experience dating or in grad school. But, there
| is a reason "karen" is now a commonly used noun.
| frellus wrote:
| I've found that a lot of people in our industry (higher than 5%,
| probably much higher the smarter they are) have BPD or are on the
| spectrum which causes anger issues when things don't fit the
| pattern or outcome they're expecting.
|
| I'm not saying that to disparage these people, but I've learned
| to be careful in how I interact with certain people, especially
| as that top tier of brilliant engineer are the ones I want to
| learn from and respect, technically. They literally don't know
| they're being awful, but in realizing the deficits here -- even
| they do not -- it helps in not dismissing certain people or just
| throwing them into the 'crappy' bucket.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| The House personality - where technical brilliance so outshines
| their behavior that they can be awful to those around them.
|
| I will take an average but nice person over a genius asshole
| every time.
| frellus wrote:
| Agreed, on a personal level, a little less so on a
| professional level (within reason) in that I want smart co-
| workers. I don't need to invite them all over to dinner to
| meet the family.
|
| That being said, we try to hire for low ego, high humility
| and good communication skills plus technical. Very hard in
| Silicon Valley.
| polotics wrote:
| This looks a lot like the stats on prevalence of Borderline
| Personality Disorder in the general population.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| My phrase for this is "unreasonable hostility" and it really is
| sobering to behold every time. I do wonder if there is some
| correlation between this 5% and the percentage of sociopaths in
| society.
| synergy20 wrote:
| it's probably 20:80 rule at play though.
|
| per 20 80 rule, 20% people are just 'not decent' no matter what,
| it has nothing to do with you, it's just statistics.
|
| now for this small group again, 20% of them are really standing
| out, I mean really nasty, that makes it 4% of all people, right
| in the middle of the author claims: 3~5%.
|
| it makes math-sense to me.
|
| on the other hand, I would assume 4% people are genuinely kind
| and warm-hearted no matter what.
|
| the rest 60%(excluding 20% at both ends), or 92% people(excluding
| the two 4% at each end) are just regular folks, a mix of selfish
| and generous day in and day out.
| dejj wrote:
| 10-80-10 are the numbers I assume: 10% are terrible, 80% regular,
| and 10% excellent. I have no empirical data to back it up. Does
| anyone have?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Personality traits like this are on a Bell curve, so he's just
| talking about the "left hand corner" of that curve. The
| percentage just depends on your threshold for tolerance.
|
| I know people who are convinced that 50% of people are horrible
| people, their tolerance stops at "anything left of the median".
|
| My tolerance is the opposite, and I can work with even quite
| problematic people successfully, so I would estimate that just 1%
| of people make that unnecessarily difficult.
| metadat wrote:
| Hey jiggawatts,
|
| I agree, and want to also add: If you're in software / tech (if
| this is an incorrect assumption on my part please say so and I
| apologize in advance; I've become used to seeing your posts and
| my sense is this might be your domain), on average you're
| working with people who are _significantly_ more intelligent
| than the average adult human being.
|
| In my experience, the rate of nasty / miserable / mentally
| unstable / "want the world to burn" chaotic people amongst the
| general public in the United States is pretty close to 1 in 20
| (5%).
|
| At my swe jobs it's been more like what you say~ 1% or less who
| are serious struggles to try and work with.
| tonetheman wrote:
| [dead]
| neilv wrote:
| I was actually thinking this morning about a rash of surprisingly
| bad Covid etiquette I'd seen recently, and one thing might fit
| this "5% rule"...
|
| A minority of the bizarre Covid bad-etiquette incidents I think
| _can 't_ be attributed to accident, grogginess, preoccupation,
| symptom fatigue, etc. Specifically, I've seen a few incidents in
| the last week or two, of people who _really did seem to go out of
| their way to intentionally cough on /at someone_.
|
| It's sad, but I guess I can believe it: some people will be nasty
| sometimes, and Covid time gives them a weapon (whether they have
| it, or the victim merely wonders whether they have it), and they
| can do it with impunity.
|
| (I saw something related, earlier in Covid, but it was usually
| presumed anti-maskers who seemed to do an intentional/faux cough
| as they passed someone wearing a mask, more like they intended it
| to be a joke. What I've seen recently seems to have nastier
| intent.)
|
| I have only a handful of anecdotes, but I wonder whether the idea
| of intentionally spreading Covid (or making people think you did)
| was introduced in pop-culture recently, and people more inclined
| to be nasty latched onto it.
| [deleted]
| mbg721 wrote:
| If they really wanted to act nasty and annoy germophobes, they
| could just use the bathroom and conspicuously not wash their
| hands--no pandemic required. I would assume these are the same
| people who are amused by intentionally coughing at others, and
| the coughing probably does less damage, so the net result is an
| improvement.
| euroderf wrote:
| Clearly it's performative, and when no applause (from any
| similar assh#les in the immediate vicinity) is forthcoming,
| they take it as oppression, and the brainwashing of society
| in the large. Chip on shoulder, but scaled up by orders of
| magnitude via mass media assist.
| mustafabisic1 wrote:
| I feel like this guy is my therapist and just told me a fantastic
| insight that's perfect for me at that moment.
|
| As I was reading it, I came to the same conclusion as the writer
| -
|
| You really have permission to free your mind of those people and
| just focus on taking care of the people who don't suck. Just
| expect it and move about your day.
|
| That's freeing for me.
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