How to Avoid an Argument – or, maybe not (Profanity Warning!)
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| Beautiful Niki Grigoriadis and her husband John were my favourite office neighbours, ever. |
This blog was originally published in 2004 and remains one of my very favourite pieces. Before I posted it, I knocked on John Grigoriadis’ door to let him know I had written it, in hopes he would not be offended.
“What the hell do I care?” he exclaimed. “Write whatever you want!”
Some months later, I asked his wife Niki if she had read it.
“Are you kidding??” she exclaimed. “I printed it off, and we read it out loud before every holiday dinner. It’s a family ritual,” she laughed.
When Niki posted the above photo of herself and John at the 2014 Greek Festival, it reminded me how this story still makes me laugh, a decade later.
No one can ever say John Grigoriadis doesn’t have a great sense of humour about himself. The bastard.
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I am frequently struck by situations which are noticeably ironic, coincidental or serendipitous.
For example, some years ago when I was desperately seeking office space I found the perfect space two blocks from my home. I can walk there.
I worried a bit on moving in, because I have quirky professional habits as a writer – listening to funky trance-inducing World music and burning Tibetan incense because it helps focus my mind. I was concerned that my neighbours might be irritated by the sounds or the smells emanating from my office.
That was before I met the tenant in the office immediately next door to me. John is one of the most successful real estate agents in this area, regularly doing deals for amounts of money of which I cannot even conceive.
Last year he got involved in a nasty lawsuit and paid his lawyer more money in legal fees than I earned in the whole year – “And this lawyer is an asshole, I don’t trust him at all,” he fumed to me one night. “But who knows, the next guy I get might even be worse! Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t know,” he advised me seriously.
John’s habits while working are somewhat more extreme even than mine. He smokes brutally strong Turkish cigarettes that cloud up the whole floor for hours after he is gone – nothing I could ever burn in my office could make a dent in that smell.
He doesn’t play funky World music while he works. Instead, he shouts at into the phone at lawyers, mortgage brokers, purchasers, vendors, and especially other real estate agents. The ranting sometimes goes on for an entire afternoon at a time and builds to such a fever pitch that I worry one day he will have a stroke, or cause someone else to have one.
“You cashed the f—— deposit cheque, you bastard, when you knew you weren’t supposed to! I oughta come over there and break your neck, you f—— asshole!” was the litany one afternoon. “You cost me this deal, and you’ll never do business in this town again, I promise you that, you f—— idiot!”
Strangely, I’ve never found either the sounds or the smells coming from the office next door even vaguely disturbing but on some level, completely hilarious. Here I am in my sunny SpongeBob yellow office promoting programs in human relations and writing articles on positive communications, to a background soundtrack of histrionic shouting and vein-popping anger accompanied by billowing clouds of stinky tobacco smoke.
And we are great neighbours, always ready to help each other out with a quick favour or a useful piece of information. He asks me for my opinion on marketing ideas, I ask for his advice on the real estate market. His wife is a lovely woman.
“Do you know,” I couldn’t help smiling one day, “that when I first moved in I was worried my music and incense might disturb you? Of course, that was before I found out about the Turkish cigarettes and the 100 decibel phone calls.”
“Really? Can you hear me next door?” he asked, wide-eyed with sincere and anxious concern. He considerately waved away a thick plume of smoke. “I’m not disturbing you, am I?”
“No, not at all, I find it hilarious,” I said. “I feel like I’m living in a situation comedy and you are the most extreme character in the piece – it’s so surreal it makes me laugh out loud. And the smell of the tobacco smoke reminds me of the Pall Malls my mother used to smoke, so I don’t even mind that.”
Today we reached the ironic extreme. Returning from a meeting that was all about community and positive events, I passed John’s door to hear him screaming at a purchaser.
“Don’t you even think about walking away from this deal!” he was thundering. “You go to that lady and give her that cheque right now, you bastard, or I swear to God I’ll come over there and shoot you myself!”
Holy mackerel, I thought. If anything ever happens to this guy, I’ll have to tell the police I heard death threats being uttered. For the first time since we became neighbours, I actually worried about the shouting coming from next door.
I paused for a moment to wonder what Dale Carnegie would have said to my neighbour John. Actually, I think a whole book would be required – and if anything changed John’s behaviour, it would mean the end of my daily surreal ironic coincidental serendipitous laugh, which I would miss very much.
Even so, I think Carnegie would have offered up these tips from one of the best chapters in “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” entitled “You can’t win an argument:”
· Welcome the disagreement – it could be your opportunity to be corrected before you make a serious mistake;
· Distrust your instinctive first impression;
· Control your temper;
· Listen first;
· Look for areas of agreement;
· Be honest;
· Promise to think over your opponents ideas and study them carefully;
· Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest;
· Postpone action to give both sides time to think through the problem.
· “The only way to get the best of an argument,” Carnegie summarized, “is to avoid it.”
I imagine John’s response. “What does he know, the f—— bastard? This Carnegie guy ever crosses me, he’ll never sell real estate in this town again!”
–Rita Smith
