The people with the least amount of power are the people most likely to use it
Two agents in a contact center (Diana Varisova/Wikimedia).[/caption]
One of my first jobs was at a call center. It was a while back but something one of the trainers said to us during onboarding stuck with me:
The people with the least amount of power are the people most likely to use it.
What he meant was that people who feel powerless seem to be more likely to try to exert the little power they have. For example, when someone is calling you and their computer is broken, they feel powerless. For this reason, they’re often quite angry and “demandy,” to coin a term. They’ll often demand that you do something immediately, as if somehow this is going to fix things faster.
Perhaps this lesson has stuck with me because of how often I’ve observed it to be true. Why care? Because I think this has a lot to do with the current state of politics. And if you recognize it, it can help you have better political conversations.
