What a lovely article. There's a strong correlation between the energy you put out into the world and what you get back.

I often think that as I end up confirming a grumpy/aggressive person's expectation I'll be a bad customer, or confirming a kind/present persons's expectation I'll be a good one

I need to learn a similar lesson. My team lead isn't used to being questioned, and when I tried to correct him in a meeting it resulted in a big argument. I realized that I did so partly because I wanted to demonstrate my own knowledge. We were both being egotistical. Certainly he could have handled it better, but I could have avoided the problem entirely by finding a more tactful framing rather than correcting him publicly.

I guess the generalized version is "it's easier to get what you want through compromise and avoiding conflict." Or just, "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar."

Warning: An ad on this page (that I somehow accidentally tapped) redirected me to an “Apple Support” scam that was so nasty in its attempts to fire a tel: url to start a call, that tapping “Back” wasn’t possible. Beware of malware here.

Browsing the internet without an ad blocker is indeed dangerous.

Nothing says "soul" like a drive-by malware install.

So happy to see sheldonbrown.com is still up. So much valuable information there.

Slightly related to the article. I have a personal cargo bike. The most fun that I have with it is giving friends a ride home from a party. People instantly start giggling and laughing. It's goofy, you get stares and people curious

What a great site design. Easy to read, simple layout almost comforting.

Sheldon Brown's website is to bicycles, as Arch Linux Wiki is to linux.

That comparison kind of breaks down though — the Arch wiki is collaboratively maintained by thousands. Sheldon's site is one guy's accumulated knowledge. Does that make it more like a beloved textbook than a wiki? The maintenance model seems pretty different.

I must be unenlightened because this job would make me quite misanthropic. Even sitting in a doctors waiting room gives me that feeling.

I can relate but I've found it's really less about the people and more about my current state and how (in)frequent is my exposure to them.

I started renting a desk in a co-working space starting this year and there's a new guy here who conducts his meetings in the room instead of going to the conference booth and uses a pretty loud mechanical keyboard.

Half a year ago, when I was still working from home and not going out much, I would lose my shit. It's not that it's not annoying, I'm just a little bit desensitized to it.

Yeah, exposure tolerance is real. I noticed the same thing after working from home for two years -- going back to an office was brutal at first. Took maybe six weeks before I stopped noticing the ambient noise. Your nervous system just recalibrates. The co-working guy probably won't change, but you'll stop hearing him.

It seems to me that a significant point of the article is that this is a choice you're continuously making, not an immutable fact about you.

Same thing kept me out of sales for thirty years. Then I spent a summer doing support calls at Sun in '94, figured out the misanthropy was really just fatigue. Two weeks off fixed it. Some people genuinely hate people though -- that's different and no amount of rest helps.

That's quite the story. I have a family member that spent some time on a taxi and the stories are much the same. Assholes aplenty.

I haven't yet read the essay, but I will jump at the opportunity to share my experiences working as a pedicab driver in Austin, TX for 5 years:

Pedicabbing is one of the most satisfying, fun, and rewarding jobs that I've ever had for a handful of reasons:

1. I had full autonomy to operate how I see fit. I work when I want, I retire when I want, I roam where I please, and I select (or deny) customers I want to serve. I can hustle as hard as I want to drum up work and persuade other to take a ride or I can sit passively and wait for people to approach me.

2. It taught me a lot about sales, negotiation, value-based fees, soft skills, being an entertainer, and showing people a good time.

3. I was pedaling for dollars and hauling up to three full-grown adults at a time. Sometimes uphill. The physical exertion gets easier, but remains challenging. Quite often I am doing the equivalent of high intensity interval training for 8 hours a day. By the end of a shift I am operating on a runner's high.

I got home every night at 3a, took a shower, and then passed out in bed like a stone. Then I rose and ate 1500 calories for breakfast. Not to mention my constant food intake while working.

Gallons of water would flow through me. Quite often the heat was so much that I'd go hours without the need for a bathroom break because it was all coming out through my skin.

4. I met a LOT of fascinating people and got to spend 5-15 minutes at a time getting to know them. Having good conversations. If we hit it off well enough I have it within my power to park up my cab and spend time with them. I've ended up spending entire nights hanging out with people who I really enjoyed. Off the clock.

5. If all else fails and work is slow that evening I still have a custom stereo strapped to my cab and (for a music lover like me) that is all I need to keep going. People had to listen to some WEIRD shit on my cab, and often I would meet people who were just as passionate as I am and want to share their favorites.

6. The job is improvisatory, surprising, and rewards those with an open mind and an eye for opportunity. Those with a "yes, and" mindset. If you're down for it, you can follow your nose to some wonderful surprises.

7. You get to know the city intimately. You take pride in navigating well and in a creative manner. Being a pedicab affords you a lot of flexibility in how you travel, that cars cannot access.

8. Your fellow pedicabbers. A very colorful bunch. People from all walks of life do the job. Artists, crusty punks, 65 year-olds, family-men (and women), students, athletes, entertainers, the fabulously extroverted. My friend was a marine biologist for the city whose day job had him out in the river in a wetsuit taking water samples and working in a lab by day, and he was pedaling for dollars on the weekend. One of us was a clerk at the Capitol and was studying law. A common thread amongst us were people who had alternate lifestyles and this was a good hustle that suited our needs.

Many of us were musicians. I originally got into the job because I did a lot of touring with my band throughout the year. I needed a job where I could hit the road for two months and then jump back in as soon as we got back into town.

I could go on, but the job was so much fun. It's not for everyone and it takes a certain type, but for my five years on the cab I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Sheldon Brown is a treasure

Quite different than the scam pedicabs that operate in US cities now.

They're popular in London too. The scam seems to be that if tourists don't arrange the price beforehand, it'll be arbitrarily inflated - they don't run a meter like a licensed taxi.

What’s the scam?

Rode pedicabs in Austin for two summers. The tipping dynamic Sheldon describes is real -- you learn fast that the fare is almost irrelevant compared to the energy you bring. Groups who seemed like bad tippers would double it if the ride felt like an event. The physical exhaustion also strips away any pretense pretty quickly.

Haven't visited Oslo, but I thought Norway was largely a white-skinned population. Why would it be jarring to see a white person doing any kind of job, or are you referring to some kind of job division racism?

In a lot of US tourist cities, I would say that’s who is predominantly doing it