From: robert@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Robert Kennedy)
Subject: Re: was:a mission honda/yamaha testemonial, now different
Organization: CS Department, Stanford University, California, USA
Date:  4 Sep 92 18:24:07 GMT

txd@ESD.3Com.COM (Tom Dietrich) writes:
>I wonder if we the customers are not contributing as much to this as
>the service providers are. Think about it, we're frustrated or even
>pissed off at this problem that we're working on on our bike. This
>problem is kicking our butt... Could this color our judgement a
>little???

I know what you mean. I have several answers to your point, but mostly
my opinion is this: You're right. We the customers definitely
contribute to the interactions, whether they're pleasant or not.

>It's possible that the  service guy's not a skilled peopple
>person in some cases, and he'd dealing with us in a situation that our
>best friend could easily piss us off... I dunno, whatdaya think??

That's true. When I go into a shop, I'm looking for something over and
above mechanical competence (though even that's hard to find); I am
willing to pay someone to be a "skilled people person." I can deal
with unskilled people people (?), but it's worth something to me not
to have to. In cases where someone has other assets that outweigh the
people skills issue, I have been known to opt strongly in their favor;
a great example is someone I'll call, umm... Carl. He's close by, he
charges reasonable rates, he does me favors, and he's very competent
in my experience. But he doesn't strike me as a people person. It took
the two of us quite a few interactions to figure out how to deal with
each other. I won't bore you with the details, but we have a great
relationship now even though I think we had serious problems
communicating at first. There are people I would send to Carl, and
people I wouldn't. I sure wouldn't make a general net-wide
recommendation that he is the "mechanic for everyone," because his
approach at first is to try intimidating the shit out of whoever he's
just met, and if they're still around when he's done, and still calm
and intelligent, they've passed and can move on to bigger and better
things. Some people can handle this sort of interaction, and others
absolutely hate it.

In spite of all this waffly stuff, there are a few interpersonal
skills that I *require* of anybody I'm going to deal with, especially
if I'm going to pay them. I won't go back to someone who I feel
started out refusing to listen to me. I won't go back to someone who
breaks my motorcycle and then refuses to admit they broke it and/or
refuses to fix it. Carl was very skeptical of everything I said at
first about what might be wrong with my bike, but he did listen and
remember what I said. Later he discovered my words were reasonable,
and that started building trust between us. Now if I go in and tell
him, "The bike's kind of snooberly when I slog the detruzzer, so I
think maybe the flurbinator's out of adjustment," he'll go straight to
the flurbinator and check it out.

In short, I think it's reasonable to insist on a basic standard of
competence and ethics, and I think it's also valuable to exchange
information about who, in our experience, goes above and beyond that
standard.

	-- Robert