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Comment by b5n | Hacker News Reader

> 21. Talking is often an overt showing of need. Therefore this rule: No talking.

I'd argue that silence is even more powerful than 'no'. Learning to wield it properly has served me incredibly well.

Using this technique I got a great deal on a car after the salesman threw out a number first. I simply sat there looking at him and said nothing for maybe 20-30 seconds. He threw out a lower number. Then I said "I'll think about it" and walked off the lot. He called me back later with an even lower number.

It felt awkward at the time to do it, but I didn't feel awkward after saving thousands of dollars.

Walking off the lot got me into the craziest argument I ever had with another human: I went to Maxwell Ford, in Austin, (2018) and asked what the cash cost of the base model Explorer was. These are practically "no options" vehicles, as they're loss leaders. Every few minutes someone would come by and try some tactic that didn't involve telling me a cost (we'd swapped ph#s at some point). At the 30 minute mark, I just got up and walked away, while the sales person & their manager were blabbing at me. They followed me to my car as I drove away. Then they just started calling ... and calling. Each time I'd say "what's the cost?" I'd count to 30, and if they didn't respond I'd hang up. About the 10th time, I asked them to stop calling.

The next day the manager calls me & begins loudly complaining that I can't just hang up on her staff. I hung up on her. She called back screaming at me. I just lowered the volume & let it go. After a minute she paused to take a breath, and I said "can I ask a question?" She said "yes", then I asked how much the car was. She started screaming again; I hung up & blocked their number(s).

Anyways: don't go to Maxwell Ford, they're not mentally well.

I ended up getting the Ford at Lief Johnson. I showed up, saying I was buying with cash. The salesman, Bob, just stared at me for a few minutes and told me a number (29k$), "take it or leave it, my commission is only $50". Out the door in 90 minutes.

I spent most of my life in a place where you get the posted, manufacturer price (or maybe lower) and there's no negotiating.

Buying a car at a dealership in the US is in my top three most bizarre experiences while living in the US. I had never witnessed humans acting that way to one another before, and I'm not sure I've witnessed anything like that since.

What a hilarious yet angering story, got a real LOL from me.

All this talk of "not showing need" is kinda disturbing given the pitch is that this is for work and home. If someone wants to be a super hard negotiator in a professional context, I have no comment on that, but being super reserved and not demonstrating need in the context of your spouse and kids is toxic and manipulative. "I don't need you, you must come to where I am, and where I am is the status quo. We're all rational adults here." is not a way to speak to people you have an explicitly emotional connection to (where your relationship involves what I like to call arationality, which is to say, irrationality without the pejorative connotation; not employing rationality in a context where rationality is inappropriate). "We're all predators who take advantage of the needy" is a poor outlook on life in general, but to treat people in your personal life that way is. Very concerning.

Codependency is real and you may not have experienced it but saying 'no' and giving yourself the freedom to not be needy when you negotiate - works for some people and it doesn't mean you are being toxic or manipulative or less caring - it just means you aren't always going to put the (often less than ideal) needs of the other ahead of what's best. Imagine being a parent who always caved into every desire of another - it's not always in their best interest - especially if they are not fully mature or have some other issues. Sure, if the other person is fully mature and more or less ideal then this is less of an issue.

I actually was in a terrible relationship with someone who I believe likely had NPD (IANAD. To establish I'm not making this up on the spot & provide more detail if you'd like to hear it, see this comment [1] from a year ago), and while it's true I did a bad job setting boundaries ("saying no"), the toxic manipulative tactics they used strongly remind me of the tactics in this document. They specifically told me I wasn't needed and wasn't helpful to them, multiple times every day, and when I would try to leave, they would tell me I was essential to them and that they would kill themselves if I left them. When I tried to erect boundaries, they would deliberately tear them down.

Establishing boundaries is healthy. Denying that you are in a relationship of mutual need is gaslighting. Establishing boundaries is about being honest about your needs and what you are able to provide in a relationship, and it requires making yourself vulnerable to someone; telling them where your tender spots are and asking that they not poke them. That is very much not what this document is about. This document is explicitly about denying people any possible leverage over you as a preemptive strike. Again, if it prescribed this behavior in the context of a sales negotiation, I'd have my thoughts on it, but I wouldn't comment on it. But it says, "go ahead and apply this idea literally everywhere," so I feel compelled to call that out for what it is.

May I ask if you have experienced a codependent relationship?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29781678

I wonder about the longest stretch of silence that has passed in a negotiation because both parties read the same negotiating self-help books and attempted to apply them on one another.

Were they making direct eye contact, menacing faces of stone each daring the others to make the first move? Were their jaws and brows completely relaxed staring dreamily off into the ether? Were they all self-consciously posing in various confidence-signalling power-poses, strewn about the conference table?

I would love to have been a fly on the wall there.

I’ve seen a two-party meeting end with a long silence. It felt like leaving a funeral service.

If you saw it, doesn't that mean it was at least three party?

I was part of the group that got up and left (not my ideal outcome, but I wasn't the boss.)

They’re still there, two desiccated corpses silently eyeing each other. At least neither lost the negotiation!

Same here, I found that, for myself, If i am talking to much, I am trying to fill up space. Its not my job, I dont need to please anyone. I have interests and objectives and if the line of conversation falls into those categories then I cane speak, otherwise, I really don't need to speak.

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