Negotiate

I recently asked a large institution for some money. I lied on the application form. ‘Lied’ might be a strong word. I had supporting evidence that might be enough to get the box ticked, and honestly I didn’t expect them to push back. Much to my surprise and chagrin, they did.

I considered for a moment caving, that maybe this wasn’t worth defending, that maybe I should let the bureaucracy win this bout. Then I thought; fuck that. I didn’t even bother adjusting the application in my response. I just sent it back and told them it was the best I could do.

Herb Cohen wrote the single best line on negotiating in his book You Can Negotiate Anything. I’m going to give it to you right now so you don’t have to read it (you’re welcome):

“Behind every rule there is a human, and humans are negotiable.”

This rule can change your life. You don’t have to be an asshole; I’m a passive guy most of the time. There is not an ounce of Bulldog in me. People think being a Bulldog is what negotiating is, but it really isn’t. Nice guys and gals can and should negotiate.

The truth is - no matter how far we’ve progressed liberalism and upheld the dignity of the individual - that you are at the mercy of behemoths that don’t know who you are and don’t care about you. They’re called governments and corporations and for the same reason they’re very effective - spending and making money at scale - they’re also brutal. They will bury you if you don’t fit in with their prescription. Tech companies are particularly egregious when it comes to this, because they’ve figured out if you can’t complain to them, but still want to use their service, they don’t have to give you diddly. You tried lodging a customer complaint on Uber?

And actually you negotiate every day. You negotiate with your partner about your conflicting needs; you negotiate with your workplace about schedules and output; you negotiate with the world to fit in the many, many things we could do with our time but cannot. This is not about developing an adversarial mindset, but one in which we’re able to suck the marrow out of life while acknowledging the legitimate claims others have over us.

This is why negotiating isn’t just for Bulldogs. Bulldogs think life is a battle. They are half right. Life is also a quest for greater resonance, and some negotiations diminish us just by luring us in. I once screwed a taxi driver in Thailand out of an extra buck he would have made for the ‘principle’ of it. The ‘principle’ was actually my manly pride in bargaining this guy down, and believe it or not I felt smaller the second he acquiesced. You can afford not to worry about losing petty negotiations. Don’t bother with them, and watch your life instantly improve.

But if you truly, actually believe you deserve the best - which you may not - than you cannot let rules created by other people you have never met or will ever understand you dictate what you do. Yet I do. We do. We all participate in a great civil conspiracy to get along, even to our detriment. Sometimes we need to kick up a fuss.

One more story. I used to manage a cafe. Every winter, we’d have a special menu printed out, and this year I sent them off to a local printer with the most catastrophic error possible - small enough to escape my proofing (admittedly I’m not a details guy), but egregious enough that it would be noticed, which I did when we got them back. Cafes have tight margins, so this was an expensive oopsie.

I sent an email back to the printers asking for them to run another print for free. They said no. I sent back an email including the line below:

“Times are tough. Can you reconsider?”

They did it for free. Sometimes all it takes is a question (‘Times are tough’ works magic). We partnered with these guys for years.

Don’t be an asshole. This isn’t a license to do whatever you please. But do politely and firmly ask why something is happening and if it ought to apply to you. Odds are there’s a human behind the rule, and for them it’s probably far too much effort to stop you getting what you want.

Negotiation is advocating your reality.