Astro's Management Secrets, or Don't Look Now, It's George Jetson

“Just talk it out.”

Sounds like good advice, doesn't it? Most of the time, it is. But the key to getting along with people, I think, is remembering that no one is “most people.” Each situation is different. There is no automatic “one size fits all” response.

Not long ago, I forgot something helpful I had learned from my friend Katherine, and thus created a rift with a friend we’ll call “Jose.”

Katherine had told me that when she and her boyfriend had an argument, "we don’t spend time trying to work it out.”

What? You just let it fester and create more problems?

One day I was driving with my friend Helen. She saw a parking space. It looked good. But she said, “I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Don’t say that!” I said, remembering the importance of positive thinking, which I had once tried to explain to Audrey, the owner of an office supply store in the neighborhood.

“You’re going to be late,” she said, as I chose my last items one afternoon just before closing.

“Would you please think positive?” I replied.

Audrey smiled. “I’m positive you’re going to be late,” she said.

And so there went Helen, pulling into the parking space she thought wouldn’t work.

“Ah, so the moral is it might work even if you’re convinced it won’t?"

Very nice.  But that's not what I was trying to get at.

Here’s what I learned from Katherine: She and her boyfriend—who had been together for many years by now—never talked through their misunderstandings. They would just set the disagreement aside and get on with whatever they were up to. Later, doing something unrelated (driving, for example), they would suddenly find that the misunderstanding had worked itself out while they weren’t looking.

It’s a variation on the Pareto principle: most problems solve themselves without any intervention on our part.

Did I remember that with Jose? Would we be having this conversation if I had?

There was a television show years ago called The Jetsons. The show featured many newfangled appliances. One was a motorized treadmill for walking dogs. (I cannot recommend this, as I know people who walk dogs for a living.) The dog, who answered to “Astro,” did fine, but his owner, George Jetson, got stuck on the treadmill and was pulled over the same stretch again and again.

Of course, I would never do such a thing.

Every time I would see Jose—well, almost every time—he would smile and say “How are you?” (At least, he did that the first few times; after that, he would look at me sideways and move slowly away.)

Can you guess what I would do? That’s right! I would launch into an explanation of How A led to B and then C and D, thinking, “He will now understand, and everything will be better.”

Do you think Jose had any interest whatsoever in pursuing this line of conversation, especially since he had asked me at least once to forget about it?

Right. But I was still stuck. I kept trying to talk about it and trying to get him to talk about it, and—surprise!—things just got worse.

Then, one fine day, I remembered what Katherine told me.

So if you have a problem that you just can’t seem to resolve and it is not a matter of life and death, be Astro. Keep moving. Get some exercise. Turn your thoughts to something else. Change the subject, already. Don’t be like George, trapped in the same loop.

One of my friends was in the military and many of the people with whom he was stationed had political beliefs that made his hair stand on end. They also had a phrase they used often:

“How about those Mets?”

There is no law that says you can only talk to someone about one subject. The next time I see Jose (assuming he doesn’t run for the exit), I plan to put this into practice. But since I don't know where he stands on New York teams, I might have to make it the Giants.

©2012, 2013, 2014 Laynie Tzena.