How to win friends and Influence People

by Dale Carnegie

Resentment caused by a brash order may last a long time—even if the order was given to correct an obviously bad situation. Dan Santarelli, a teacher at a vocational school in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, told one of our classes how one of his students had blocked the entrance way to one of the school’s shops by illegally parking his car in it. One of the other instructors stormed into the classroom and asked in an arrogant tone, “Whose car is blocking the driveway?” When the student who owned the car responded, the instructor screamed: “Move that car and move it right now, or I’ll wrap a chain around it and drag it out of there.” Now that student was wrong. The car should not have been parked there. But from that day on, not only did that student resent the instructor’s action, but all the students in the class did everything they could to give the instructor a hard time and make his job unpleasant. How could he have handled it differently? If he had asked in a friendly way, “Whose car is in the driveway?” and then suggested that if it were moved, other cars could get in and out, the student would have gladly moved it and neither he nor his classmates would have been upset and resentful.