Easy Ways to Avoid an Argument - West Virginia University



Easy Ways to Avoid an Argument

By Sam Horn

My five-year-old son and I stopped at our local ice-cream store to get dessert for his birthday party. The place was crowded with people. A high-school girl was alone behind the counter. Though working as fast as she could, she seemed to be falling further and further behind.

At last she called our number, and I asked for three quarts of chocolate ice-cream. “Three quarts!” she said. “Do you know how hard it is to scoop three quarts?”

I was tempted to let loose with “Well, excuse me! I thought this was an ice-cream store!” Instead I held my tongue and asked myself a question I often raise when I’m on the brink of an argument: Why would she say something like that? Realizing then how overwhelmed she must have felt, I asked, “Has it been one of those days?”

Her hostility melted. “It’s been nonstop since this morning. I’m all alone, and I was supposed to get off at one o’clock, but….” She continued to unburden herself as she packed our ice-cream. When we left, she gave us a big smile and a friendly wave.

It’s natural to take offense if someone is rude. You may think: What a jerk! But blurting out how you feel will only make matters worse. Dealing with difficult people is a part of everyday life, and there are ways you can stand up for yourself without starting an argument. I call these techniques “Tongue Fu!”

Handle arguments with humor. All of us tend to lose out temper. If you find yourself in a difficult situation, try having fun with it.

As an IRS worker explained to me, “Almost everyone who comes in here is hostile. Instead of taking offense, we’ve posted bulletin boards with comic strips that pike fund at the IRS, which we jokingly call the Income Removal Service. When taxpayers see these, their attitudes change for the better.”

When people complain, don’t explain. The phone rings at work. You pick up and the called launches into a complaint: “I asked for a catalogue three weeks ago and I still don’t have it! What kind of business are you running, anyway?”

Don’t bother explaining that half the staff is out with the flu. Well-intentioned though they may be, such explanations usually add to the complainer’s anger because they come across as excuses. Avoid explaining in detail what went wrong. Instead, agree, apologize and then move on to what can be done about it. Simply say: “You’re right. I’m sorry you haven’t received it yet. If I can have your name and address again, I’ll personally put it in the mail to you today.”

Agree to disagree. A man I know said he and his wife went to her parents’ house for dinner one night. “While we were eating,” he recalled, “I mentioned that the highway construction was stalled again. My father-in-law said he was glad. ‘That highway never should’ve been built! It’s destroying an important historical valley.’

“Well, I spend over an hour each way commuting to work. I told him I thought the highway was a necessary evil because there are four times as many cars as there were ten years ago, on the same number of road. My wife’s dad grumbled that it was typical of my selfish generation to think more about our commuting time than a significant archeological site.

“I lost my patience and said, ‘You can’t stop progress.’ That did it. My father-in-law stood up and walked away, saying, ‘I don’t have to sit here and listen to this at my own dinner table.’

“I wish the whole thing had never happened. If I had been alert to his feelings about the matter, I could have prevented the whole unfortunate incident by saying, ‘Let’s agree to disagree about this,’ and politely directing the conversation to something else.”

One effective way to avoid an argument is to say, “We’re both right!” and move on to a safer topic. For example, you and your wife disagree about how to discipline your teenager, and your discussion is turning into an argument. Just you aren’t seeing eye to eye doesn’t mean you’re enemies. Saying “Hey, we both want the same thing” can get you out of the quarrelsome mode and get you working together again.

No matter what the situation, arguments are a waste or, at best, a misuse of time. By avoiding meaningless arguments, everybody wins.

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