As a car owner, it can be frustrating listening to a mechanic explaining your car’s engine problem. Remember, he’s giving you a tuition-free education. He could just charge you money or lie to you. When he shares his knowledge, you should be thankful. The more you know about your car, the better condition you can keep it in and the less likely a bad mechanic is to do you dirty.
As a business owner, you may contract, hire, or both, when it comes to specialized talent. Those talented people will want to talk to you and share their expertise. Don’t respond with a faux pas.
A Rush Limbaugh caller once said, “I mean, if someone gives you a box from Tiffany’s, you say, ‘Thank you.'”
It’s not about being rich or smart or educated or wanting to be a geek or being materialistic. The polite, kind thing to do when someone gives you a compliment is to, quite simply, be thankful. If nothing else, it’s back to mom putting drawings on the refrigerator. But, when you’re paying the person who wants to throw in something extra to boot, you might want to display that artwork under glass.
Whether you think like an investor, deal-maker, employer, or simply a friend, it should count as at least three red flags when someone disrespects the opinion of hired talent. It might be a worthy HR tactic to stall job applicants with a janitor babbling on about why he mops the floor the way he does, just to see which applicants care and which get irritated—and the janitor is the actual guy giving the interview.
I actually do that kind of stuff when I visit a potential sourcing factory for the first time. I throw out my “crazy guy strategy ideas”—in part, never all—to let the factory owner filter himself. If he rejects my idea, then it won’t work out when I order 100k pc anyway, and, on record, he was the one who rejected me. So, he can’t complain when I’m ordering, literally, from the factory across the street.
Rambling talent could save you big money. Never stop learning, especially from your own hired help.