Just being correct brings fewer gratuities in the hospitality business

If you are looking for the irony of life, I recommend hiring a brilliant Turkish historian whose livelihood depends upon tips from twelve opinionated Americans—and then watching him insult the people holding the envelopes.

His name was Erdal.

Erdal was a gifted young scholar from Istanbul who spent his summers guiding tourists through Turkey. He knew every emperor, battle, mosque, ruin, invasion, and dynasty from Istanbul to Ephesus to Cappadocia.

Unfortunately, he knew considerably less about Americans.

For ten days, he led our group of twelve through some of the richest historical territory on Earth. It was not an easy assignment.

We had Mable.

Mable was 83 and considered herself a youthful, carefree spirit. She was certainly carefree. The rest of us did the caring.

Half our day was spent searching for ancient ruins. The other half was spent searching for Mable.

She would wander happily down some alley while eleven Americans and one increasingly exasperated Turkish historian formed a search party.

We also had a father and his twenty-year-old son, Adam, enjoying quality time together. Adam had an unfortunate digestive problem that made it advisable never to stand directly behind him.

You learned this once.

Our remaining members contributed the more traditional American tourist specialties: complaints about hotel rooms, bus temperatures, lunch schedules, mattresses, plumbing, and the distressing tendency of foreign countries to behave foreign.

Erdal endured us.

Barely.

He had prepared to teach us 3,000 years of Turkish civilization. Instead, we taught him what happens when American senior citizens spend ten days away from their preferred pillows.

But Erdal had another problem.

He was incapable of softening an opinion.

Most tour guides understand a basic principle of the hospitality industry: if twelve people are deciding how much money to put into your farewell envelope, it may not be the ideal moment to explain why their country is responsible for everything wrong with yours.

Erdal rejected this pusillanimous philosophy.

He had strong views about America’s support for Kurdish groups in Syria, and he shared them freely. Whatever the historical subject—Romans, Ottomans, mosques, carpets, kebabs—we had a remarkable tendency to arrive back at the United States and the Kurds.

We might begin the morning discussing Emperor Constantine.

By lunch, somehow, Washington was guilty again.

Most of us knew as much about Kurdish geopolitics as we knew about repairing diesel engines. But Erdal was not going to allow ignorance to interfere with our education.

He was fearless.

He was principled.

He was also watching his tip disappear before his eyes.

This fascinated me.

Here was an intelligent man who had discovered one of life’s oldest conflicts: Do you want to trumpet your opinion, or do you want to persuade somebody?

‘Not always the same activity.

Erdal believed that truth, once loudly stated, possessed its own magical powers. Deliver the facts forcefully enough, and your listener would eventually collapse in gratitude.

Human beings do not work that way.

Punch a man in the nose with the truth and he rarely responds, “Excellent point. I’ll  reconsider my assumptions.”

That is where humor becomes more than entertainment. Humor is lubrication for ideas. It allows uncomfortable truths to slip through doors that indignation keeps firmly locked.

Erdal could have said exactly what he believed. But a smile, a question, a little self-mockery, or even one joke about Turkish politics might have transformed confrontation into conversation.

Instead, he charged uphill with the intellectual bayonet.

I admire him for it.

Sort of.

Because the older I get, the less impressed I am by people who are merely correct.

The world is overflowing with correct people shouting/shooting at one another.

What seems rarer—and considerably more useful—is the person who can say something difficult without making the puke before he reaches the period.

Erdal probably lost some money that summer.

But he left me with something more memorable than another lecture on Romans, Persians, Mongols, or Ottomans.

Truth matters. Integrity matters. But delivery matters too.

You can serve truth straight, warm, and gracious.

Or you can wrap it around a brick and throw it through somebody’s window.

Both methods get their attention.

Only one has much chance of changing minds.