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Moving out: manipulation case study in tasking
Hello guys,
today I helped a friend move his furniture from his old flat. I learned a lesson in manipulation I want to share with you.
I arrived earlier and my friend is not there yet, he's coming back with the van. At the flat, there is a room with 3 girls and another room with A. I learn that we are moving my friend's stuff from the room where the 3 girls (his friends) are waiting.
Manipulation attempt 1: as we are waiting, she's asking me if "I don't have anything to do" if I can help her to dismount her bed. I'm not in a detached mode, so I'm trying to think and then I learn that we are supposed to move things from this room and she's also moving from this flat but to another city. We start to move my friend's stuff.
Manipulation attempt 2: later on, A. asks again if we could help her dismount her bed. I go in the room and I see she hasn't done shit. She has not even tried to dismount it. So, in a detached mode, I asked her: do you have a plan? She says yes. So I say: follow the plan, you just have to unscrew some screws and that's it. She implies that a professional moving team is supposed to come later. I resisted her manipulation attempt to make me dismount her bed as she's a stranger to me and I'm helping her roommate (my friend) to move out.
Manipulation attempt 3: We finished moving all of my friend's stuff and I'm going to leave. I already said good bye to him. One of the 3 girls comes back to us and asks us if we can help A. move her stuff. I feel a bit angry as I already identified from the get-go as a taker/manipulator. I go see in her room what it's all about. At this stage unconsciously I don't want to be labeled as an unhelpful person and I'm not in a detached mode. Keep in mind that now it's been 2 hours we've been moving out my friend's stuff. I go in her room and she said that actually the "movers" are actually 1 brazilian guy who will only come at 2pm (30 min later). So she's painting herself as a victim. I grab one of her armchair and climb the stair with her. Outside as I drop I tell her: "I came here to help my friend and now I'm going to leave". So her manipulation attempt was successful as she finally used her roommate's friends to move HER stuff. Actually, everybody helped her in the end. I did little effort but still I got used through her manipulating one of the group's members.
My mistake: I should have just said "no, I'm not going to help you". But these people they use our desires to appear pro-social against us: "you're not helping me means you're not pro-social/a good person". Also, by helping her I set the wrong example for the others to be taken advantage of.
I'm currently reading 8 steps to eliminating passive-aggressiveness. And I'm starting to see how our own fear of confrontation makes us vulnerable to these kinds of manipulations.
What do you think?
I love this example, John.
These are all signs, of course, but to me these signs say:
- The fact she was asking for help while she did nothing herself already sets her up as a taker
- When you asked if she had a plan and implied she had a "mover" coming also signals a liar/status inflater approach
- When another girl came asking you if you could help A, that's possible A sent her there (as you noted)
You didn't do too bad, plenty of people would have ended up expending lots of effort for an ungrateful individual.
What I might have said here is:
You: Hey, hi. I'm here to help my friend first. Let's see if after that we have some energies to spare
You leave the door open to help, but in the meanwhile allow her to realize that she must win your help. If she proposes something good in exchange -say, invite you out for dinner and drinks later-, then you can consider it.
If not, you have another good sign that she's a big taker and that, whether you have energies or not, they shouldn't be spent on helping her lazy, taker's ass.
Thanks a lot! I do think I did some "ok" damage control.
For me it's clear that she applied some kind of "poor me" tactics on the other girl and indirectly asked if we could all help her.
Quote from John Freeman on November 1, 2020, 1:38 amSo, in a detached mode, I asked her: do you have a plan? She says yes. So I say: follow the plan, you just have to unscrew some screws and that's it.
By the way, this was really good.
Top power move.
It started with a trap question, but everything's fair game when you need to reach a fairer end.
When she said yes to her having a plan, you tasking her to follow her own plan seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
That forced her to come up with a lie -the "movers" coming- to hide her laziness.
And once the lie became apparent, that weakened her position and status.
You could have also leveraged that lie later on, for example saying to her friend "oh no, that's OK, A. is far better organized that we are. Se told me she has movers coming later. Those professional guys do a much better job than we ever could" -LOL-.
And also great that you told her "you just have to unscrew this and that and that's it".
That's minimizing somehow, but again, some principle as before: everything's fair game when you need to reach a fairer end.
Now the frame if she doesn't do is: "wow, she couldn't even do such a simple thing that I even explained to her how to do, and now she expects me to do it?".
