The Things You Shouldn’t Have to Say

 I ended up having a discussion last night with someone who was trying to tell me that I was beneath her. In her efforts to show me that I was her inferior, she made the point that she was “high class” unlike me and the people associated with.

It was at that point that I realised that the discussion was going nowhere and had this been a rational debate, I would have won. So, I just kept quite and allowed her to berate me and until she grew tiered of repeating herself. It was this simple, the fact that she had to say she was “high-class” was the point where she admitted that she was anything but.

There are, as they say, certain things that shouldn’t need to be said at all. One of my favourite examples of this comes from across the border where there is chain of restaurants in Malaysia called “Sedap,” which is Malay for “Delicious.” Why does a restaurant need to call itself “delicious.” A restaurant by definition should serve “delicious” food because that’s the very reason why people go to restaurants in the first place.

 

 Are they called “Delicious” because ……?

Social class is like the restaurant that calls itself delicious. Why do you need to call yourself “high class” if you are? Social class is one of those things that’s very easy to tell. The most usual often evolves around things like your job. For example, are you a technician or a working professional. These days, your profession is also an indication of how much time you spent in school

Beyond the obvious criteria like what you do for a living, where you went to school, your zip code and how you get around, there are other often overlooked criterion for “class.” One of them is good manners. People of a certain class tend to have manners, particularly in the area of how they treat other people.

Why should “superior” people need to announce the fact that they are “superior” or to remind everyone else that they are “inferior.” A superior person, should behave in a manner that is “superior” to other people if they are really superior. I think of an Indonesian girl that I once had the privilege of going out with. She asked the taxi driver to take us to “Boat Quay.” However, the taxi driver took us to “Clerk Quay.” When this happened, she told the guy, “Bro, I said Boat Quay, this is Clerk Quay. But OK, we all make mistakes, I’ll still pay you for this.”

Instead of going into a tirade about how the taxi driver was trying to cheat her, she made the point that a mistake was made but it was OK. This lady was of a certain breading that it was beneath her to get angry over a few bucks.

Let’s put it this way, a person with class treats everyone with a certain amount of dignity. All of us know how to treat those with money and power very nicely. We either want something or need something from them. What counts is how we treat the people who can give us nothing.

David Ogilvy once said that one of the most important things about promoting people to the top jobs was character.

 

 One of the key drivers in determining a leader’s character is by how he or she treats the underlings. The moment you have someone who starts talking down to people and proclaiming that they are high class or announcing that they have a great character, you know that they are not people or class or character.