How One Driver & One Pedestrian Stopped Being Dickheads to Each Other for One Minute

Scene: A Chicago intersection during the morning rush hour. There is a “white border optional” stop sign there.

Action:

I’m the second car back from the intersection, Traffic is moving way too slow. Drivers are sitting there, waving each other on, doing the “now that I’m completely stopped, this strange and rare sensation of not moving has rendered me temporarily unable to remember how to use the skinny pedal that makes me go” thing.

Finally, a driver snaps out of it. Someone goes.

The truck in front of me goes. No, hang on, not the truck. The car behind the car that just went runs the stop sign—white border optional!—and cuts the truck off. Now the truck. And now another other car. Now me. No, hang on, not me. The car behind the car that just went after the truck also runs the stop sign and cuts me off. Now me. No, hang on, a bicycle is flying through the intersection, also about to cut me off. The biker stops in the middle of the intersection and waves me on, annoyed. How silly of me. OK, now me. No, hang on, a pedestrian has taken advantage of the situation and jumped in front of my turning car.

What a dickhead.

Dickhead pedestrian and I start waving each other on, each of us clearly annoyed with the other.

Wait a minute.

That’s not “a dickhead pedestrian,” that’s my friend Tom! (With a beard—when did that happen?!)

I smile. My annoyance evaporates. Instantly. At the same time, Tom discovers that the car in front of him isn’t being driven by some dickhead city driver, it’s Jason Seiden, dickhead author!

The internal dialog that follows includes: “Why was I in such a hurry?” “Good thing I didn’t give him the finger.” “I’d better rib him about jumping in front of my car before he ribs me about trying to run him off the road.” Typical stuff.

Tom waits—smiling—as I pull into a parking lot. I walk with him the block to his office. We get caught up, and I tell Tom I have someone he needs to talk to for business. Quite a different ending than had I just driven off, annoyed at some stranger, right?

Which is exactly the point: relationships matter. Imagine if we hadn’t just been negotiating an intersection, but a contract… or a budget item… or a job offer… and had reached an impasse as annoying as a slow-moving intersection.

In that moment, it’s the relationship that keeps options alive.

I just wrote about this on Monday. The effect is real.

So if you’re surrounded by dickhead drivers, dickhead pedestrians, dickhead bosses, dickhead coworkers, dickhead clients, dickheads dickheads dickheads, then guess what?

You are a dickhead.

And you need to go make more friends.

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.