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Do not waste another’s time and energy or your own patience by suggesting even indirectly that there is more than one course of action, if there is only one which will get the result you require. The work to be done takes half the time if the attention is undivided and so is free to go on to the next demand quickly. Have you ever been in an office where, let us say, a worker who considers herself rather too well-bred for the position she fills is one of your co-workers? “Oh, Mr. Robinson,” she will say, elaborately, “if you have just a moment to spare, will you go over those reports on your desk some time soon? I hate to trouble such a busy man, but Mr. Smith wants them.” Now, deplorable or not, it is just plain ornery human nature to wish you hadn’t just a moment to spare, to cast around you almost automatically for something else you might be doing which would make you far too busy to get to that request right away. Yet probably going over those reports is the next thing on your program, anyway; if you succumb to the temptation to hold up the work and teach the ex-countess a lesson, you hold up the whole work of the office and get into trouble with your superior officers. Now, wasn’t your time and energy wasted by the unfortunate way that simple request was made? Yet the chances are that you yourself say, “Miss Thomas, will you get me the Drummond correspondence, if you aren’t too busy?” when it is Miss Thomas’ function to get the correspondence at your request whether she is otherwise busy or not; when she will have to say “Certainly,” and pretend that she is free to refuse if she likes. It would be just as simple to say “Miss Thomas, I need the Drummond correspondence”—which would release her to go straight to the task, feeling that she was not receiving a consideration more than half-patronizing, and not even needing to make a perfunctory reply. If the tone of the simpler sentence is courteous and considerate you have not only left her feelings unwounded, you have treated her as your willing co-worker and given her cause not to think of herself as a touchy subordinate who must be mollified.
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