Photo by Flirty Kitty

I can tell you that vanilla is the best ice cream flavor in the world. I can tell you why it’s so much better than all the other flavors. I can tell you that it outsells chocolate 3 to 1.

But when all is said and done, none of that matters, because maybe you just like chocolate better. And that’s OK.

And maybe I like vanilla better, and that’s OK too.

Photo by Leonid Mamchenkov

Recently I’ve read two blog posts that spawned major debates in the comments. In one of these posts, there were many people commenting on multiple sides of an issue, with lots of well-reasoned arguments as well as a lot of emotion. It was very entertaining to read. Perhaps it went a bit too far, but everyone seemed fine in the end.

But in the other one, things got completely out of hand. One person was extremely disrespectful of others and repeatedly went out of his way to be rude. Surprisingly, the blog owner seemed OK with it. I stepped in with a comment to try to calm things down, and the owner emailed me. It turns out that the rude commenter had ultimately been blacklisted. I guess the owner wasn’t as OK with it as I thought.

While the second case was obviously an example of what not to do, I think a little disagreement is a good thing. When I see environments where everyone is always agreeing about everything, it just seems a little fake to me. People are supposed to be different. If your opinion is different from someone else’s, that’s OK.

When it comes to this blog, I don’t want anyone to feel that they can’t disagree with me. It’s good to share different viewpoints, and sometimes we can all learn a lot from disagreement. Of course, I can’t say that I’ll agree with everything you say, but at least I’ll listen.

Then again, there’s a right way and a wrong way to disagree. Here are some tips for disagreeing on this blog or anywhere else.

1. Decide what you want to gain by arguing. If I see a blogger post something completely ignorant and irresponsible, sometimes I want to cause trouble. But in most cases I don’t. If your goal is just to politely offer a different point of view, keep this in mind as you write your comment, and don’t take it too far.

2. Be respectful of other people. If you come off as being a raving lunatic hell-bent on putting other people down, no good will come of it.

3. You don’t have to argue about everything you disagree with. It’s important to pick your battles, and every disagreement is a tiny battle. A little bit now and then is fine, but if you’re constantly nitpicking, people will quickly tire of you.

4. If possible, agree before you disagree. If you generally agree with what someone said and you just want to argue with one point, be sure to comment on what you liked first. It makes your criticism seem less harsh, and people will be more willing to try to see things your way.

5. Don’t think you have to finish every argument. Outside of a formal debate, there won’t necessarily be a winner of an argument. After you make your point, a lot of back and forth is probably not going to help. Say it, be heard, but don’t beat a dead horse.

You might not have noticed that the photo at the top is a photoshopped image of someone arguing with himself. I think this is an appropriate image because it shows that a disagreement doesn’t have to be “us” vs. “them.” We can all be on the same team, and just toss around different opinions because it keeps things interesting and helps expand our thoughts. If we can just argue in a respectful way, I’m sure we can agree to disagree.

This was an old draft post that had been sitting around since February. I’m posting it now because I’m about to write a post about constructive criticism, and I was reminded of this post.

By the way, those of you who read IttyBiz know that Naomi turned off comments not that long ago. She said her blog was meant to be a lecture, not a conversation, and that lame comments were impacting her writing, driving away nice people, and giving bad advice.

I think it’s perfectly fine to decide that your blog will not be a conversation, but that’s not the direction I’m taking with my blog. Feel free to converse!

I see some people out there saying that a certain blogger deleted their comment, and how dare they censor them, and why don’t they believe in the value of debate, and the First Amendment guarantees them the right to leave any comment they want (though it doesn’t), etc.

I’ve never written up a comment policy, but suffice it to say that I reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason. Yes, that’s censorship. Of course I’m going to censor some things. I don’t guarantee anyone the right to leave blog graffiti here.

Having said that, I’m not going to delete a comment simply because I disagree with it. Disagreement is fine. A comment would need to contain a rather large amount of rudeness and/or stupidity for me to delete it, and fortunately, I get very few of those.

Image from Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

How ironic is this? This morning, I was reassuring Vered that she’s definitely more of a mommyblogger than I am, and now I’m writing a post about how to be a woman. How did this happen?

Rest assured that I have a good excuse. As I was catching up on reading blogs, I noticed that in Steve Pavlina’s post How to Be a Man, he offered to link to all quality submissions of a “How to Be a Woman” article.

He specifically said that you don’t have to be a woman to enter, but acknowledged that it might help. Handicapped as I may be, I thought I’d give it a shot. Without further ado, here is my guide to being a woman.

1. Don’t apologize for being a woman.

You’re not a man. Surely you already know that. And yet, it’s possible that you’re secretly pretending to be one. Maybe you’re in a profession that’s dominated by men, so you feel you have to hide your femininity by dressing a certain way, acting a certain way, hiding your emotions, and so forth. Maybe you want to have a baby and take extended maternity leave, but you feel guilty that you’re not putting enough emphasis on your career.

The fact is, men and women are different because they’re supposed to be different. Men and women live their lives with their brains soaking in different hormones, so it’s inevitable that they turn out to be different. Men need women to be different, so don’t apologize for being who you are.

2. Realize that men are confused about how to treat women.

While the double standard was unfair, it had the benefit of being clearly defined. Today, women have many more options available to them, but the equality of the sexes has left many men wondering how a woman wants to be treated.

If a man gets out of his car and walks around to open the passenger door for a woman, she might be surprised by this behavior and give him a look that says to him “What, are you gay or something?” (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Based on this experience, he might later decide that when she offers to help pay for dinner, that he should let her, and she ends up being silently offended.

Realize that when your man goes back and forth between treating you like a modern liberated woman and a 1950s housewife, it’s quite possible that he just has no idea what you want. He’ll appreciate you for understanding his confusion and dropping hints about how you want to be treated.

3. Be clear about what being a woman means to you.

I once saw a woman who was absolutely furious about something that had happened to her at work, and was complaining about discrimination against women and the gender wage gap. I thought she certainly had some valid points. However, when she later got a speeding ticket, she asked “How could he give me a ticket? I’m just a girl.”

Maybe you have an idea about what being a woman means to you. For example, it might include being entitled to the same career opportunities as men and receiving equal pay for equal work. Fine. But if you play the “I’m just a girl” card whenever it’s convenient, that’s completely inconsistent with the image you had about women being equal to men.

If you keep changing your mental concept of being a woman, you’re sending out inconsistent vibes. If you sometimes expect to be treated as powerful and sometimes expect to be treated as helpless, the world won’t know how to respond to you. Decide who you are, and consistently project that image.

4. Help men out with the “Venus” concept.

In Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, John Gray pointed out some differences between men and women that might be stereotypical, but are also fairly accurate. He says that when women talk about a problem they’re having, what they really want is sympathy, but a man’s instinct is to offer solutions. This results in the man not being appreciated for his efforts, while the woman thinks he doesn’t care.

The reason your man offers solutions instead of sympathy is because in his eyes, sympathy doesn’t help nearly as much. The solutions aren’t because he doesn’t care, but because he doesn’t know any better. But if he understood that sympathy is what you really want (if that’s true for you), he’d be very happy with that, since being sympathetic takes a lot less effort than figuring out solutions.

Just be aware that he needs you to help him figure out what you want. If he starts thinking of solutions, just say that all you really need is a back rub, for example. Then let him know you appreciate it at the end. After doing this a couple of times, he’ll learn this is what he’s supposed to do.

5. At the same time, make an effort to respect the “Mars” principle.

The other point that John Gray made is that men don’t like to be given unsolicited advice. While meant to be helpful, to them it might sound like “I don’t trust you to be able to solve this problem. I need to help you because you’re not capable.”

The classic example is men’s infamous unwillingness to ask for directions. I know this is not universally true because in the days before MapQuest, I once voluntarily pulled over at a gas station to ask for directions, and thought nothing of it. However, some men can be much more difficult, refusing to stop for help, refusing even to call the friend they’re trying to find.

While this behavior may perplex you, know that it’s normal. If possible, try to avoid giving advice, even if you think it will be helpful. You can be the bigger woman here! However, there may be situations where remaining silent stops being an option, such as when you’ve been driving way too long, you still haven’t found the place, and you know you’re not going to.

One possibility is to just take out your cell phone and call someone for help, without telling him in advance what you’re doing. This way, you’ve spared him from “the shame of giving up.” On the other hand, he might not like this at all. There might not be a universal solution for this problem, but you can learn from experience what works best for you.

6. Don’t be offended when your man stares at someone else.

Yes, he’s wrong to do it, but it’s a necessary side effect of the same hormones that helped bring you together in the first place. A confident woman is secure enough not to feel threatened by an occasional peek. Besides, as Marilyn vos Savant said, “A pretty woman turns the heads of the boys, a beautiful woman turns the heads of the men too, but it takes a gorgeous woman to turn the heads of the women.” So if you didn’t turn your head, then she’s not that much of a threat.

If your man is bothering you by excessively staring at other women, one way to handle it is with an unexpected comment such as “check out the ass on her!” In addition to bringing to his attention that he might be staring more than he realizes, he’ll be so impressed you had the courage to say such a thing that he’ll instantly forget about what’s-her-name.

7. Gracefully handle the wedding dress issue.

If you’re an unmarried woman, the odds are good that one day you’ll want to spend thousands of dollars on a custom-made designer silk wedding dress that you’ll only wear once. The odds are also good that you’ll fail miserably in convincing your man that this makes any sense at all.

He wants to marry you, but he doesn’t care about the actual wedding, so don’t try to explain how important the dress is to you. He won’t get that. Instead, relate it to something he does care about. Something like this:

“Honey, did you see that the new Porsche 911 is out? I love this car, but the sticker price starts at $74,000. That seems like an awful lot, and your 1993 Corolla is still holding up. What do you think?”

To you, the car is stupid. To him, the dress is stupid. But they both mean similar things to their prospective owners. If you show that you value his wants even though you don’t understand them, he’s much more likely to reciprocate. Besides, the Porsche is a much better deal in terms of hours of enjoyment per dollar.

(Since finance is one of the topics I write about, I can’t let this go without saying that both a Porsche and an expensive wedding dress are terrible investments, logically speaking. Sure, sometimes it’s not about logic, but think very carefully before deciding that you have money to burn.)

We all have customers. For some people this is quite obvious, because you actually have a product or service that you sell to people. But even if you don’t, you still have customers. Your boss is a customer of your employment services, your spouse or significant other is a customer of your “love services,” and so on. We have to make sure our customers like what they’re getting, and that means we need to make an effort to gather useful feedback.

I’ve always thought that GEICO had fantastic customer service, second only to Go Daddy. Not that I called GEICO all that much, but whenever I had a question about my bill or wanted to change my policy, they were knowledgeable, helpful, and courteous to a far greater extent than what you normally find. That’s why it pains me to say that they’ve just given me the worst customer survey I’ve ever seen.

A few months ago, I filed a claim for a 3-car fender bender I was in. Today I got a claims examiner survey because apparently my opinions about the claims service I received are important to them. Sure, I’m happy to help.

First of all, the survey is about my experience with the claims examiner, and I’m not sure who that is because I spoke to several people. They say:

Your Claims Examiner was the primary point of contact for you regarding your claim. He or she determined what was covered by the GEICO policy, and addressed all aspects of your claim except for inspecting and estimating your vehicle damage and handling your rental.

OK, so it wasn’t the guy who inspected and estimated the damage, but this still doesn’t clear things up. I spoke to one person when I filed the claim, I spoke to another person who took my statement about the accident, there was another person whose phone number I was given in case I had any questions, someone called me to say that I should no longer call that person if I had questions but this other person instead, someone (possibly the “other person”) left me a message saying to call her if I had questions but we didn’t really need to talk, and someone else called to say who was paying for what.

So who is the claims examiner? I think it’s the person who left me the message saying to call her if I had questions, but I never spoke to her. That makes most of the survey questions useless, but let’s continue anyway.

It starts with eight questions about discussing the details of the claim with my claims examiner. If I knew for sure who the claims examiner was and had actually spoken to her, I could answer the questions with no problem. They want you to use a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is unacceptable and 10 is outstanding. If any rating is 7 or less, you have to tell them why and what could have been done better.

First of all, 7 out of 10 is not a low score, and it doesn’t necessarily indicate a problem. Second, if you make people provide that much feedback for scores of 7 or below, they’re likely to give 8s and above just to avoid that. Third, why don’t they want to hear about what they’re doing right? Fourth, the two lines they give you are not enough room to provide adequate detail for even one “7 or below” response.

There’s another question about how satisfied I was with the claim examiner’s explanation of who was at fault. The problem is, that explanation didn’t come from the claims examiner, at least not if they are who I think they are.

One of the questions asks how likely I am to recommend GEICO to a friend or family member. What does that mean? If someone specifically asks me for a recommendation for car insurance, then I’d recommend GEICO. But I’m not going to become an evangelist for them. So should I say 10 or 1?

Something that made me laugh was the question “What else could we have done to make this a far more satisfying experience?” Why do they need to say “far more?” Why presume that the experience was so awful that there’s tremendous room for improvement?

I’m sure GEICO spends a lot of money to send out, collect, and interpret these surveys. I’m also sure that the feedback they get is far less accurate and useful than it could be. Why not pick a few people and pay them $20 each for a phone interview about their experience? Then instead of getting a low response rate and arbitrary answers, they’d get people who were motivated to be as helpful as possible.

I have no idea how to answer this survey. I’m tempted to leave the answers blank and just send them a link to this post. It’s not what they asked for, but it would be far more helpful. Sometimes the best customer feedback you can get is answers to questions you didn’t ask.