We judge people, organisations and almost anything by how they made us feel and base our recommendations on that.
The most valuable currency we have is our effect on others — Jim Carrey
A few months back, my wife and I had gone for a play in the evening in an area we didn’t go to very often and after it got over, we were scouring for places to eat. I recalled a place I had been to before in the near vicinity and suggested that we go there. It was a little late at night, we didn’t have our own transport and we were both hungry,. This meant exploring an area we weren’t too familiar with wasn’t an option.
I had thought of the place from my previous experience and this posed a problem. The place was more or less a steakhouse and vegetarian options were limited and almost non-existent. This obviously limited what my wife. who is a vegetarian, could order, and she settled for a paltry sandwich. While I learnt my lesson of picking restaurants better and thinking of the other person when making a suggestion, recollecting the experience made me think about how we recommend.
For my wife, the food in the restaurant didn’t suit her palate. But the service and ambiance were fine.
If someone asked her about the place, what might she say?
This is the most probable reply — ‘if you’re a vegetarian, that’s not the place for you. But if you love meat, maybe you should check it out’.
She hasn’t tried the meat but based on the crowd and my review, she has garnered that the place is good for meat lovers.
Now let’s twist the experience a little.
What if we had a terrible experience where the wait was long and the waiters rude?
That would nullify the entire experience. The fact that she couldn’t enjoy most of the dishes would have been secondary to the fact that the service was terrible. If someone had asked her about the place, her most possible reply would have been — ‘terrible place. Bad service and long wait. Don’t even bother going there’.
The larger thing at play here is that we judge people, organisations and almost anything by how they made us feel and base our recommendations on that.
I have faced this similar dilemma on numerous occasions when it comes to rating cab drivers. Many a time, the conversation would have been engaging but the driving, rash. By the end of it, I would have mixed feeling about the ride. It’s easier if the ride was smooth and the conversation friendly or the driver was rash and rude at the same time. Makes giving a rating easier.
When we work in places where we had a good experience and were valued and respected, we tend to overlook the not so great aspects when recommending the place to others.
On the other hand, when we work in a place where we had a terrible experience, that supersedes everything.
The way a place, a person or a group of people made us feel is what drives our recommendations.
Before we ask for a recommendation, maybe we all need to work on the effect we have on others.
