There are many people you are well advised to treat kindly: Your child's teacher, your husband or wife, your boss and so on.

Until now, that best-behavior-required list has not included your Uber driver, or for that matter, taxi drivers. Old thinking: Hey, they're here to serve me. I don't have to make a special effort to be nice to them.

Dangerously wrong.

A recent New York Times story-told the instructive tale of a Uber passenger, Hussein Kanji, who says he's really not sure how he made his driver angry. All he knows is that his driver-generated rating went way down and the wait for a Uber car became hours instead of minutes.

Beware, Uberians: If you're feeling angry when you slide into the back seat and you give your driver the silent treatment, your reputation may get damaged in the driver-generated ratings. If you're among the people one Uber driver described as “generally negative”, watch out.

Uber isn't the only front on this battlefield. The ability to rate someone's service is one of the successes of the Internet. It helps everyone weed out(清除)people with bad attitudes and worse habits.

These ratings should cut both ways. A while back, the auction site eBay made many of its sellers angry when it started preventing them from giving negative ratings to buyers. Until then, sellers and-buyers had threatened each other with negative reviews. Too many negative reviews could get you thrown off.

Then eBay shifted the balance of power to buyers. Sellers can still write a bad comment, but the overall rating cannot be anything but positive. Thus eBay has become a place where all is for the best. Think positive!

We know that being nice to people all day can be exhausting. We've also seen people who shout at those who don't measure up to their expectations for service.

Uber is reportedly about to spread worldwide. It is a welcome competitor because it fits the needs of customers in a new way. We know Uber is a two-way street. But drivers who get too picky may end up with no passengers.

Everyone, behave!

How to deal with Whiners (抱怨不停的人)?

There are always some people radiating negativity in the work place. For them, the temperature is never right, the boss is always a fool, the canteen food is awful, and they are always treated unfairly.

Career experts say such habitual complainers are highly contagious and that their attitude can easily affect an entire team in a company. “While some complaints might be reasonable, others are taken from thin air. You need to see between these different types and  adopt the right strategy towards each,” said Li Ling, HR manager at Wal-Mart (China). 

It’s especially hard to deal with complaints at work because you can’t just walk away or put your colleagues’ words out of mind. If you do, it will hurt your co-workers and you might be isolated. In a team-based company you belong to a group and need to behave accordingly. But don’t show too much sympathy. Listening passively to others’ complaints could damage your image and give others the impression that you agree with them. “Listen to the whiners actively,” says HR Li. “Help them find a solution, or see if there are ways to improve the situation.”  

Zhai Min, 24, a software engineer at Kingdee International Software Group in Shenzhen, found that 3 elderly workers liked to complain about everything, from extended working hours to  cheap hotels on business trips. “I let them talk about their opinions,” she said, “They feel better when they can tell someone how they want things to be.”  

But listening actively is far from enough. Wang Dianxue, 27, is an Internet engineer at Beijing Push Marcom Group. His co-workers always complain that their computer systems are not working properly. “I ask about the specifics and work together with them to fix everything technically.” he said.  

HR managers believe that when staffs complain, it is more a matter of recognition than an actual problem. “The real problem is that the whiners don’t feel they are being taken seriously,” said Xu Jun, HR manager at Guangqi Honda Automobile Co., Ltd. “When you attentively give them advice or perspectives, the problem usually disappears.” 

We see it everywhere. A tired parent, at the end of a stressful day, loses it — and a child suffers. We’d like to help if we could, but we hesitate. Is it our business to intervene (干涉)? And if we do, will we embarrass and offend the parent, making him or her even more angry with the child? Isn’t it wiser to walk past without comment? After all, none of us is a perfect parent.

There seems to be a common assumption in our society that intervening on behalf of a child in a public place is necessarily hurtful and critical. It needs to be neither. There is a world of difference between hurtful criticism (“How dare you treat your child like that?”）and helpful intervention done in a caring way (“It can be really hard to meet their needs when you’re so busy. Is there anything I can do to help?”）There is nothing essential in intervention that requires one to be offensive.

My friends and I have witnessed some really harmful acts: hitting, severe verbal abuse, hurtful comparisons to brothers and sisters, and so on. These children accept this treatment because they are too helpless and inexperienced to stand up for themselves. That emotional abuse (虐待) leaves no outward scars should not excuse us from helping these children. Those of us who can recognize damaging treatment have an obligation to step in.

There is one more reason for intervening that is nearly always overlooked in these discussions, but which I consider to be the most significant: the lifelong effect it can have on the child. Many adults in counseling sessions still recall with gratitude the one time that a stranger stepped in on their behalf, and how much it meant: that someone cared, and that the child’s feelings of anger and frustration were recognized and accepted. These adults have stated to me that this one intervention changed their lives and gave them hope. Are we to bypass the opportunity to make such a big difference in the life of a child?

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________