Another way of being authentic that I get to practice at the gas station, besides “Creative Crankiness” and “Keeping It Human”, which I describe at my “Authentic Customer Service” website (www.earhtlink.home.net/~authenticcustomerservice/) and elsewhere in this blog, is “matter-of-fact”. (My word spellchecker may suggest that there are no hyphens necessary in this expression, but I’m going to use them, just to indicate the integration of these words – they are, for me here, like one adjective.)
When I am being matter-of-fact, I am not attempting to inject any “extra juice” in the transaction, not trying to “really show up”, etc. In these regards, this matter-of-fact way of operating may sound like the opposite of “Keeping It Human”, but I think it actually is not. I think it more inhabits a place somewhere between “Keeping It Human” and “Creative Crankiness”.
One way of thinking about those two other styles is that, first, KIH is a lot about the customer. Yes, as in all of the writings on the ACS web site and here in the blog, there definitely is a determination to keep your own authenticity as you serve the customer. But still KIH has a lot of focus on impact on the customer. Contrary to this focus on impact on the customer, “Creative Crankiness” is more about you as the server, finding ways to express out there what is your internal state – irritation. This form of serving also involves extra juice, but here the extra juice is not so much about reaching the customer as about expressing your own self.
Matter-of-fact (Let’s call it MoF for simplicity) operating is not about expressing extra juice at all – perhaps it could be equally called “juiceless” communication. It has no feeling tone. It is pure description or a totally simple answer, stripped to its bare bones. Some examples at the gas station would be:
Customer: “Twenty dollars on Pump 3.”
Me: “Thanks.”
“Pump 5”
“The red car (Subaru, etc.)”
Pumps 6 and 1 often confuse people re. the correct number. When they look over from the booth, they see the number 5, which is the number for the inside pump. On the other side of this pump, though, the far outside pump is #6. So, when someone says pump 5, I will routinely describe their car – and maybe add “on the inside” to make sure they really mean 5, not 6. Similarly at 1 and 2. But that little bit of extra interaction can still be very matter of fact, devoid of any feeling tone. Lots of my responses to customers fit this format. Likewise the next one.
“Pump 4”
“Twenty dollars.”
When someone simply gives me their money or puts it on the counter and turns to go back to their car, I will routinely announce how much they gave me – just to make sure we are in agreement on what they put down. This is adding a little extra to the transaction, but the motivation is very matter-of-fact – just to keep things straight. It could have a little edge of CC, irritation, because I do think it’s kind of goofy on their part to not make sure we are in agreement about how much money you they just gave me – but I prefer to not get emotionally engaged and just keep my response MoF.
“Twenty dollars at Pump 2”
“I’m not ready yet”
Because I still am completing the last transaction. Some people either wait because they can see that I’m not ready yet, without any intervention from me, or they begin to say the above, then notice that I’m not ready and retract what they had said. They may even apologize. The apology makes sense to me, because I do think it’s kind of rude to start in with me when it is obvious that I’m not ready. But my preference, again, is to not get emotionally hooked here, to just keep my responses MoF.
I sometimes alternate “I’m not ready yet” with “Hold on” or “Give me a moment”. These inherently have a little more energy, because they are making a request (telling them what to do?), rather than purely descriptive, but I do like to keep them as MoF as possible.
“I can’t get the pump to start.”
“Push the white start bar.”
I do sometimes alternate this totally stripped-down response with “Have you pushed the white start bar?”, which, even if spoken in a very flat way, is slightly less MoF, for inviting a response.
“Is there 7 cents off on Premium today?”
“Yes.
I might or might not then add, “Every Tuesday”, but there is a moment when “Yes” stands by itself.
“Don’t you give 3 cents off for paying cash any more?”
“No.”
(I love it when Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, says she lives by the truth that “No” is a complete sentence. I may go on to explain that now they can get 3 cents off by using the Enmark cash card, but there is a moment there when “No” just stands by itself.)
Functioning in this kind of matter-of-fact way may seem on the surface of it to be extremely simple. But for me it actually is not. I am a relationship junkie. After all, I worked for many years as a counselor, where the relationship is the vehicle for the work. I then worked for many years as a management consultant. This consulting work is less about the relationship (except for “coaching”, which comes closer), but the communication here tends to have a strong instructive edge. Even questions, here, tend to serve the purpose of going somewhere – they have a purpose, which is less MoF.
But, even more important in my life than these kinds of work I've done is that I was raised to be a helper. This mode of relating was drilled in to me (or manipulated into me) so deep that it is hard to come from any other place in a relationship – or even a passing encounter.
One particularly tricky way of relating, which is related to being a helper, is to be “nice”. A long time ago, I came to dislike and to begin rooting out “niceness” from my interpersonal style. While others might call me nice and mean it as a compliment, I came to not receive it as a compliment. I got clear that I did not want to be “nice”, but real, human – or authentic. (More on this in the “Creative Crankiness” article on the ACS website.)
If being real comes out in warm way, that's fine – and probably way more positive than some effort to be “nice”. And, since I think it is natural for human beings to have a positive response to other humans, then warmth or engagement will naturally characterize lots of our interactions.
(I love the scene in the movie “Harold and Maude”, when Harold, the neurotic teenager, asks Maude, the life-affirming older woman, how she manages to be so good with people. Maude replies, “Well, they are my species.”)
So, the many variations of “Keeping It Human” come fairly natural to me, even if some of the more subtle or sophisticated of these interactions represent lots of personal development or learning over many years. Creative crankiness has been much more of a learning edge for this originally overly nice guy. But these are still pretty charged interactions. Maybe they are especially charged because they contain some extra effort to resist the pull of niceness.
But matter-of-fact is matter of fact. It does not lean toward KIH or CC. It is pure information. It has no particularly human quality. A computer could do it about the same way.
Now a friend of mine took issue with me about the above point. He said, “I bet that even when you are being matter-of-fact, you are still more engaging than most cashiers these people run into.” This may be true – there may be some KIH quality from me even in interactions that I regard as purely MoF. That’s ok with me – I still regard these interactions as MoF because they involve no effort from me.
(And lots of my interactions do move a couple of degrees off of pure MoF, by including a little lilt in my voice or a genuine smile, without any extra engaging words. This kind of response truly involves very little effort from me, but is not included in what I here call truly matter-of-fact.)
Being MoF, for me, can paradoxically involve some extra effort - just to keep in this zone, when I am so programmed to give just a little extra when I am interacting with another human. But, for me, being matter-of-fact, even when it takes a little extra effort, can be especially liberating. It may connote – if only for me – that I am just fine, equally valuable, even when I am not being nice, or a helper, a teacher or coach, or anything like that. So it can be particularly freeing for me, even when it is a learning edge and so involves, paradoxically, a little extra effort.
But the real payoff is when that little extra effort to be MoF has already succeeded and now MoF just rolls off of me as natural as can be. Lots of factors can make this MoF way of operating especially appropriate or useful or simply natural:
- There may be a line or that moment may – line or no line – be especially busy, with one person after another coming to the window with no break, so I just don’t have the energy to give any extra juice to all these interactions.
- It may be later in the shift, when my energy has naturally dropped.
- Or the customer may be operating in an especially irritating or foolish way, and I choose to save the energy that would be involved in getting creatively cranky. When I go to purely matter-of-fact in these kinds of situations, the customer may accuse me of not being nice – or even rude or even “hateful”. (I saw someone call the boss this the other day, when I thought he was pure MoF. I think this one may be a particularly Southern and even more specifically “country” expression.) Them jumping to the conclusion that I am being rude often comes, I think, from defensiveness on their part – they know they are being a pain in the butt.
I think this particular developmental edge – becoming naturally matter-of-fact - may, in fact, be one of the main things that keeps making this job worthwhile for me. I may have already gotten most of the value I can out of the creatively cranky or even keeping it human dimensions of this work. But matter-of-fact interacting is still more of an edge for me. I may be destined to stay in this job just a little bit longer, until matter-of-fact interactions – which could be described as juiceless, but are in their own way creative - come as naturally to me as the more engaged "creatively cranky" or "keeping it human" styles.
