Don't Love It, Just Do It

Is this the fourth of four planned "conservative" posts? In this post I make a Bible-based argument for a "conservative" use of language...

Specifically, a company with which I do business has been inserting into e-mails, as meaningless boilerplate, the words "I'll be happy to assist you with" as distinct from, say, "May I assist you with," or "-- is my department."

It brings to mind a conversation with a lady who said recently of a Young Thing who worked for her, "She does good work but I don't want her answering the phones. She doesn't mean to sound so curt with my customers, but she does. This morning someone called in and said, 'Can you do X number of product A by time N,' and she just said, 'Sure!' Imagine if that had been you!"

How little this dear lady knows me. "If she can have X number of product A ready by time N, and I were the one who wanted them, what's the problem?"

"Well, I mean to say, I would have said 'Certainly I'd be delighted to!'"

I've thought about this, off and on. I've talked about it with people I know better than her. I'm convinced that we are not talking about a generation gap, a North/South divide, or a socioeconomic distinction, so much as a temperament clash.

There are people who expect, and like, the extra dollop of emotion that the business owner might, for all we know, sincerely feel...and there are people who feel, as I do, that although it'd be a shame to spoil the owner's fun if the owner really feels "delighted" by a big rush job, really it's sort of disgusting to be fawned on in what we tend to assume is a dishonest manner.

Both of these categories include people currently between the ages of 40 and 75, people younger than that, and people older than that--although the proportions may vary; I wouldn't know.

Both include people from the Northern and Southern States, and from other countries, although Southerners of my acquaintance do show more tolerance for the gush of alleged emotion, since we've been told some people were trained to do it without thinking whether they actually feel anything or not. That is: Northerners who don't expect people to "be delighted to" do their jobs snap "Phony and disgusting," while Southerners say, "Well, some people were just brought up that way, but it is sort of sickening."


Both categories include rich people and poor people. Again, there may be some variation according to ethnicity and ancestral culture; I've not taken a wide enough survey to have noticed one.

The question brought to some of my relatives' mind a long-departed in-law who bought things everyone else considered tacky from a long-gone local boutique they also considered tacky. Let us say the in-law's name was Eva, as in "Deliver us from Eva."

"They gave her the 'Eva Treatment,' all right," one relative recalled. "I couldn't stand to shop there with her and watch them make fun of her. 'Eva this' and 'Eva that' and 'Oh that orange shirt looks beautiful with your red hair, Eva!' It was pathetic that poor old Eva used to lap it up. She must have thought that that was the way the middle class talk when they actually like somebody. Well, she was Little Miss Nobody from Nowhere."

The bottom line is that, for most of the people I know, the claim that the employee is "happy to" do the job is generally expected to be a lie. Most people can imagine that the owner of a business might feel sincerely pleased if a big order comes in at the same time a big expense does. Or an employee might--some people emphasized the indirect, nonverbal aspect of communicating this--be in an especially good mood that day and might even feel a need to verbalize it. If the employee does not, however, look and sound like a person who just won a prize or had lab tests come back negative, "Certainly I'd be delighted to!" is likely to be heard as both dishonest and hostile.

A minority of humankind, so far as I can see, have heard people say they'd "be happy to" do their jobs often enough that they expect to hear this kind of thing, don't really notice it as unusual, and miss hearing it when they don't. I don't know about those people.

Some languages and cultures have other phrases that have been repeated until they've lost much of their meaning, perhaps mutating into new words. Spanish has ustedes, a worn-down contraction of "Your Graces," now the way many people address any group even of toddlers or dogs. Italian has ciao, the worn-down contraction of an Italian phrase translated as "I am your slave." Japanese has so many of these flowery phrases that have worn back down to short useful words, and so many elaborate rules about who can use which ones in which situations, that all foreigners can do is compile full-length books about them and nobody's ever claimed to have completed a collection. Many languages have prayer phrases like "God be with you till we meet again" that have worn down to words like "goodbye," which are no longer even heard as ironic when they actually express "I hope we never meet again."

The English-speaking world has very few courtesy phrases that have acquired non-literal meanings of their own. "Fine" as the answer to "How are you?" is not quite a unique phenomenon in American English, but almost. "Dear" at the beginning of a letter doesn't mean that the person addressed is dear to, or even acquainted with, the writer: it means "This letter is addressed to." "Yours truly" meant, up to about 1950, "This letter is complete," but, as usual courtesy phrases start to become commonplace in English, people turned against the "meaningless" phrase. A term paper might be written about the gradual demise of "Yours truly," during which some people clung to it, some exaggerated it to "Very truly yours," some thought "Sincerely" or "Cordially" might sound fresher and more "meaningful"...and in the present century, I believe all the business letters I've seen had replaced the "complimentary closing phrase" with a sentence thought to be more plausible like "I look forward to your reply."

English-speaking people like to hear words that express good feelings, but even more than we like those words and phrases, most of us like to feel that the ones we're listening to are sincere and spontaneous. If an expression of good feelings is not "meaningful," many hear it as sarcastic. Thus, style guides noting the decline of "Yours truly" still warned letter writers not to substitute "Best regards" because, as Peg Bracken observed, it sounds "as if he has second-best ones." We do not seem generally to be a culture where a courtesy phrase less worn than "Dear" or "Goodbye" can be excused--and yes, an excuse is likely to be necessary!--as "just a pleasant thing to say." We are a culture where students read the literal translations of courtesy phrases from cultures that tolerate more of such--"'Honorable movement place' as a sign on RESTroom doors! REally!"--as comedy.

We are a culture where any exaggerated expression of good feelings is heard as hateful and insulting. "Bless his heart" was used in the nineteenth century to express not only sympathy but admiration. Has that ever changed. "Honey" is a hatespew all by itself, and "calling" anyone anything twice in a row is almost always verbal abuse, so if anyone in the South had actually said "Honey, honey, bless your heart" in my lifetime the person addressed would probably have known: it's too soon to call the police, but if you don't run you should definitely try to get the rest of the conversation on tape. "Nice" generally describes something pleasant, but sometimes means something pleasant at the expense of some quality more valuable than pleasantness. "Charming" generally describes something pleasantly interesting, but if the thing described is a person's behavior it's probably being described as also sinister and untrustworthy, so during the 1960 elections Americans adopted the new word "charismatic" to describe the personal charm of politicians, and in the 2008 elections some Clinton partisans actually mulled whether "charisma" should be held against then-Senator Obama. "Cute," which is what this web site officially calls Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, is chosen advisedly both to mean that she's young and pretty and to mean that nobody should take her ideas seriously.

This is yet another question for which the bland tolerant answers, the "Everybody is different but everybody is OK" school of thought, tend to fall short. There is a biblical answer: "Let your Yes be Yes, and your No be No."

Because, as the popular song expanded this theme: people need to "do what they say, say what they mean, because one thing leads to another."

If the big rush job will both add stress to your day and help meet the big expense, and you say, "Sure," but don't add the squeal about how delighted you feel, you're not telling the customers, "I really am desperate for work" and asking them to urge everyone they know to pile more and more work on you until you're forced to say "I can't do that." And, Murphy's Law being what it is, the person to whom you say "I can't" is likely to be the one who was not trying to bail out your business, in a tactful way, but who desperately needs the job done.

You could have given everybody a full status report: "I have a whole free weekend and I'm broke, so I'd be delighted to type Al's paper. I have most of the weekend left and I could use more money, so I'd be pleased to type Betty's paper. I have plenty of time to do it and I could buy a real treat with the money, so I'd like to type Chang's paper too," and so on up to the point of "All I've done is type for three days and I have an exam in another hour and there's no way I can type Ukechi's paper!" Or you could have kept it businesslike: "Yes, I can. Yes, I can. Yes, I...can try. No, it's too late, I can't take this job."

If you think a customer looks tired or discouraged, wanting to cheer up that person is laudable. Do it right. The person may feel more discouraged by a big forced display of your teeth (every animal instinctively knows that's a threat display) or a loud "cheerful, friendly" greeting (also known as making a noise like a social bully). In the 1990s much attention was given to the advantage in "team building" Japanese workers gained from being trained to match the boss's or customer's energy flow rather than trying to force faked enthusiasm on that person. Unfortunately, many Americans seem to have wanted to forget what was learned. You cheer up someone who may simply be feeling quiet by quietly saying "Yes we can." If the person has asked you to help raise her or his energy in the morning, because the person's only concern is a sluggish metabolism, then you may squeal and giggle and bounce and do your little happy dance. Otherwise, your "delight," real or fake, may feel like vinegar on a raw wound to someone who has, you should be grateful, chosen to refrain from telling you about the untimely death that, if mentioned, will make him or her bawl out loud and leave everyone in the office feeling discouraged and distracted.

If you happen to feel perky...my sympathies are with you, actually. Many people's are not. Hand car washes and at least one restaurant chain used to specialize in offering opportunities for top-heavy young women to bounce around stretching, reaching, bending, getting their tight jeans and T-shirts wet, and grinning manically while stuffing tips into pockets that were already snug. Even on those jobs those of us who were raking in the tips used to be resented. The price of gravitas and having any of your ideas respected on a job will probably be to get control of that crazy late-adolescent enthusiasm. You can let your eyes sparkle pleasantly without grinning, if you try. I found that a little self-control drastically reduced the number of hateful things people said about either the C-cups or the messy-looking teeth.

Our emotional moods are generally determined by our physical condition, including things like hormones and immune reactions that are harder to control than metabolic rate and digestion. Most people can choose to be eupeptic, and should. However, the pernicious "Positive Thinking" fad, in which twentieth century Christians tried to pretend that things like "Rejoice" and "Fear not" were "commandments" more important than "Thou shalt not covet" or "Thou shalt not bear false witness," has led some people to act as if being eupeptic were a virtue, which it certainly is not, rather than a blessing, which it is. The Bible writers and teachers very often told people to "rejoice," and messages ascribed to angels always begin with "fear not," but they also told people to "tremble" and "howl." In no case were these emotional directives intended to tell people to force themselves to sustain any emotional mood longer than nature intended. In every case they were merely prefaces to the messages that followed. The Bible does not tell people to try to make themselves feel any particular emotion; it does contain some messages that, the original speaker or writer knew, were likely to provoke certain emotions in those who heard the messages.

Meanwhile, although it's true that sometimes we can force ourselves to feel a little more eupeptic, when we have been feeling only a little less so, than our own personal baseline, the Bible Maven regrets to inform Christians that pushing themselves to seem cheerful makes people who are genuinely unhappy and/or ill feel worse. That's why the Bible actually has nothing good to say about the one who "sings songs to those of a heavy heart," or who "have piped, and you have not danced." The Bible writers recognized that that kind of behavior is not helping anything. We may be able to please people by doing good work. Usually that is what we ought to do. Even when we do it, though, we can't make people feel happy, and it's really none of our business to try.

The Bible has some extremely harsh words for those who try to force others to act cheerful for their benefit. To the supervisor who orders people who are not happy to act happy, the unknown author of one of the Psalms that are not associated with King David addressed the ugliest words in the whole Bible: "O daughter of Babylon, that art to be destroyed, happy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones."

Whew. Bible commentators have never been altogether sure how to take that verse. Probably the best reading is the most literal: The "daughter of Babylon" was hated, and though the author promises no heavenly reward to the man who either murders her children or smashes her trinkets, the author assures her that that man will enjoy doing whichever of those things the author had in mind. Why did this thought need to be handed down to posterity? C.S. Lewis, and other commentators who lived in more levelheaded times, thought it was most likely to be useful if interpreted as a metaphor: The only slavemaster most of us know anything about is Sin, our own sinful natures, and its "little ones" are the little temptations--just one little drink, one little "juicy" bit of spiteful gossip, one little "mistake" in our own favor on a bill--and Christians should lose no chance to smash those little monsters.

I like Lewis, and I like Reflections on the Psalms. I also like Kathleen Norris's reflections on this and other "cursing Psalm" texts. I also think we should stop resisting the obvious meaning of this horrid Bible text. It means, most obviously, that trying to order people to act out whatever it is that you want to be able to feel, and can't, is a vile thing to do. We must not allow "making us feel a certain way" to be part of anyone's job description. We must respect people's right to feel what they do feel.

Where the sinful world may tell us to look for "positive," enthusiastic employees in the belief that being around them will "boost morale," Christians are told to support the people who most need support. In many cases the people who most need jobs are not the most cheerful people. They are likely to be living with painful conditions, or to be bereaved, or to be overburdened with the care of children, parents, and sometimes grandchildren or grandparents as well. Corporate "human resources" departments will certainly snap up the perky, bumptious young people whose biggest worry is paying off their student loans. That leaves Christians responsible for hiring the brand-new widows who are probably excreting half of their total fluid intake in the form of tears, in any case, but may benefit from the distraction of trying to avoid dripping tears into their computers; and the frazzled new mothers who may, by a monumental effort, get to work only two hours late but are likely to compensate by falling asleep at their desks if they do, but didn't Christians tell them not to abort the babies?; and the guy with the brain injury producing quadriplegic spasticity, which can make him look quite alarming to anyone who makes the mistake of looking at him rather than at his finished work. Christians need to learn to look at the finished work.

"But shouldn't employees' finished work include flattering the customers, or being friendly to the customers, or making the customers feel..." As a customer I say: it should not. There may be customers, like that late unlamented Eva, who don't automatically assume that anything that sounds like flattery is a lie uttered with malicious intentions--that even "It looks good on you" probably means "It makes you look ridiculous, which is how I think you ought to look, because I hate you." There are customers, like me, who are willing to believe that--if employees wait for their opinions to be asked, if we ask for their opinions in ways that don't make them feel obliged to lie, if the words they utter then are mere vocalizations of what their faces and voices tell us--"It looks good on you" might be an honest opinion rather than flattery. We might, in case of doubt, test them to see whether they're able to state an unflattering opinion, or at least how they look and sound when they're evading having to state one. The best way to sell us clothing is to provide mirrors where we can compare different looks for ourselves. If we do want an employee's opinion it's a bit unfair to ask "How does it look?" We can and should give the employee a break and ask, "Which one of these would you choose?" But an unsolicited gush of opinion, even if it's honest, like "I like your shoes" to someone who is shopping for picnic supplies, is likely to sound like insincere flattery--to which quite a lot of us react by thinking, if not saying, "Oh shut your lying yap-hole and go play in traffic."

One of the parables of Jesus described what many Americans have unfortunately learned to expect when employees sound as if they're concerned with making anyone feel good. A farmer told his two lazy sons to get up and go to work in the vineyard. (We know they were lazy because otherwise they would have got themselves down to the vineyard.) The first one, who was probably still asleep, mumbled that he did-n-wan-na, but then, perhaps hearing his father continue to nag the other son, deciding that getting some work done would be the course of least resistance, he went to work. The second son beamed, "I go, Sir," and then, as his father moved away, he went back to sleep. Granted that everyone in the audience was probably glad not to have to claim either of these shabby excuses for sons, which of the two obeyed their father?

Nothing in the Bible or in English literature disparages the ways employees can show respect to customers in any language--by listening to what they're told, showing up on time, working efficiently. That's flattering.

That's why Christians are told that anything "more" than letting their Yes be Yes and their No be No "comes from evil." When an employee says "Sure, I can do that" and is sure she can do that, that's what tells the customers she really does respect them and like her job.