Today I got an email that made me jump for joy. Here it is, in its entirety:

Wow, asking does work. Just got $400 a month taken off rent by sending 1 email. You are truly an inspiration.

Sent from a dear friend, aka my sister’s boyfriend! Like so many people affected by these particularly difficult times in all corners of this globe, this dynamic duo is having trouble making ends meet. When times were plush, around late 2007, they moved into an awesome apartment in a great part of Seattle (Wallingford, for those who’ve been there), and they really don’t want to give it up. So he simply asked. And behold!!!

In fact, he is the inspiration, and everyone who sends me stories about their successful askings. I LOVE hearing about your victories!! Send them in!!

As for these analyses… Ready, set…

Today: Who giveth
Next: The Squirmy Gender Question
Finally: Who Taketh Away — Conclusion!!

So let’s look at who I asked.

(And remember, clicking on any image magnifies it. Feel free to forward or reproduce, but give credit to The Daily Asker and link back, please. Thanks!)

1) Which industries were more profitable?

To get a rough estimate if it was more worthwhile to pursue retailers or restaurants, etc, I tallied my gains in each category. Note: I’m using the word “context” instead of industry, below, because it lets me be more precise. For example, if I asked a friend for career advice, I put that under “Career” and not “Individual favors.” Also, Housing isn’t an “industry” as far as this graph is concerned — it’s an umbrella term for all housing-related requests (rental issues, choosing a gardener, talking to potential housemates last fall, negotiating with Mr. A about the move, etc).

Also, since Career and Travel were comparatively huge amounts (due to one paycheck and a pair of round trip vouchers), they dwarfed everything in comparison. So I left them off this chart.

Here you go:

This includes money I gained, saved, recovered or was owed.

The top three categories — stores, internet/cell phone providers, and automotive services — should be big, because they’re also what I spent a lot on. I’m surprised dining wasn’t bigger, especially considering that I spend most of my waking hours in cafes.

The low amount for many of these industries can be explained by a simple fact: I didn’t ask for financial benefits there.

Next, let’s see how easy it was to score financial and other requests (like info, fun, permission to do something special, etc) in each industry. This is a better indicator of where I should put my efforts if I’m not only interested in money. This time I’ll include Career and Travel.

Now it looks like restaurants, thought not a big financial winner, did often try to accommodate my requests (e.g. turn down the A/C, replace a gross cocktail, seat me on the forbidden terrace, and more).

Health & Safety was high because I only got rejected twice. Apparently, the beauty industry, i.e. salons, spas and beauty supply stores, was very willing to accommodate my requests, which were mostly discounts. Just knowing that makes my skin more supple and radiant!* (*Results not guaranteed. Asking experiment not approved By the FDA for wrinkle erasure. Do not try this at home and always moisturize. Offer void where prohibited. And now, back to our regular programming.)

Travel, with the biggest payoff (gained $1,665 there!) was also selectively generous. Finally, the hardest area for me to convince people to give was Financial Services. That includes banks, brokerage firms, and credit card companies. The irony of that is that it’s so unironic.

Next, let’s find out who’s more giving, based on my relationships with people.

2) Who is it best to ask?

As I looked over the results, I concluded that I asked five loose categories of people: friends/family, professional contacts, random strangers, and people I met for various commercial transactions. I felt that these distinctions were most meaningful (as opposed to, say, people I knew and didn’t know, which lumped too many potentially relevant sub-groups into the latter category; and so on.)

People I dealt with commercially, in turn, can be split into bosses and employees. These labels I determined to the best of my ability, sometimes asking and sometimes surmising.

Here’s how I fared with each group:

A few things worth pointing out here. Dealing with a supervisor or boss (owner, manager, etc) produces far better results than dealing with an employee. I expected a spread, but not that huge!!

This applies to situations where the supervisor intervened, or when he or she was alone the whole time. Even if I accidentally called an employee a boss a few times, that doesn’t make up for the huge difference. At the same time, even employees said “yes” more than they said “no” — 62% precisely — so, again, it’s certainly worth those extra 3 seconds to ask.

Also, I had a way easier time asking total strangers for random stuff than asking either employees or my professional network for help, access, money, etc. Zooming in:

I made this chart in jest, but it gets met thinking. Strangers were remarkably open, much more than I would have expected. But why the very low response rate in the career category? It kind of makes me think that maybe 1) I’ve chosen the wrong profession or 2) We’re in a recession.

Also, to be fair, these results are shaped by the kind of request, as much as by who I’m asking. Strangers received fun, lighthearted queries (share an onion ring! let’s talk about fortune cookies!), while professional contacts received more time-consuming and possibly onerous requests, like reviewing work proposals and sorting out logistical issues.

One last question in the WHO category:

3) Whom did I ask more, men or women?

Come on now. Admit it. You’re curious. Shouldn’t an experiment by and about a woman who asks offer any conclusions about gender?

Ok, here’s the first conclusion: I’m confused!

Turns out I asked men and women almost evenly. Here, with a subversive color scheme, is a pie chart:

Glad to know I was pretty even in my attempts, without even trying. That makes the next part easier. (I did ask men a little more, but that could be a statistical blip. At least, that’s what we non-math people call it, okay?)

But when I try to determined who I should be focusing on, the results are a little muddled:

4) Who was I more successful with across all types of requests, men or women?

That’s straightforward enough. But contrast that to average gains, by gender:

5) Who gave more per request, women or men?

So it turns out that men were slightly more likely to give in to my requests… but when women gave, they really and truly gave. This is due, once again, to those two super transactions (the voucher and paycheck), where both individuals who gave happened to be women. I say happened to be, because I have no evidence that a man would have behaved any less generously.

Thus my initial conclusions about gender are inconclusive.

What if we looked at the data in a more goal oriented way? As a shopper, I may have the choice of approaching a boss or an employee (and I should apparently choose the boss). What about a male or female salesperson? or restaurant employee? Is it better to ask for restaurant service when I’m with a man (aka on a date and possibly about to spend a lot) or when I’m alone, or out with the girls? Finally, based on my data, if I want a career boost or advice, or specific information on an unknown subject, should I approach a man or a woman?

Dare I post the results?

I invite you to tune in next for: The Squirmy Gender Question.

I took a break last week because I really needed to wrap up some other writing projects. I was in that mode, if you know what I mean.

But hello! I’m back!

And here we are, getting to the end of this analysis. Once this is done, in a day or two, I’ll switch back to my regular asking reports. Here’s a sample of what I’ve been up to:

–May I call you Monchhichi?
–Can you give me this $70 rug cleaning for $60?
–Can you give me your top secret, signature best selling salad dressing recipe?
–Cut me a deal on a car insurance premium?
–Let me return this pan with no receipt and no evidence I bought it here, other than my highly credible puppy dog eyes?
–And future askerly plans, to be announced…

But first:

Today I’m going to look at the how of asking, in more detail. Without further ado, here are the tentative answers to a few questions I was itching to find out… As usual, take everything with a grain of salt, preferably kosher, sprinkled on a tiny new potato! Chomp!

1) Does practice pay off?

One of my beliefs at the start of the year was that I’d become a better asker, the more I did it. And if you look at the learning curve, that’s true. I started with little requests — 60 cents here, a small favor there — which escalated to more ambitious queries as time went on.

But I was stunned to discover that when I prepared for an asking — perhaps carefully crafted an email, tried the same request a few times in a row, made a list of priorities and approaches, and/or rehearsed a few lines in my head — I fared worse than when I just winged it.

Here are the results:

Two possible reasons: first, I tended to prepare more for challenging requests, so perhaps they were harder to snag in the first place.

And second — this is where I’d put my money if I had to choose a why here– I think the preparation freaked me out. Not that I’m typically frazzled and disorganized, what, moi, never. But rather, maybe the nature of asking for a favor or bargain is far more personal than I imagined at the start of the year. Beside guidelines, rules and treatises, beside whatever principles and best practices one can glean on the subject, negotiation is about a connection. Either the two parties are speaking the same language, or they’re not. So if after I prepared, I was nervous or came across as stiff or overly formal, that led to failure.

This is not to say that I didn’t learn this year. Simply, that the revelations caught me off guard, and when I least expected it.

A different way of looking at the data amplifies the of power asking off-guard.

2) How valuable is asking for the hell of it?

A few evenings, as midnight approached, I found myself hitting the streets, wondering what to ask for. And then, an idea would come. Not a very good idea. Not an asking I truly, deeply, existentially cared about. But that late in the day, I couldn’t afford to be picky. So I asked. Can I try on your shoe? Can I eat your onion ring? Can I see the inside of your frat house?

Later, I categorized them as “asking for the sake of asking” — not because I wanted something, or wanted to help someone, etc. Just because I had this damn project to carry out.

Basically, what I wanted more than anything else was to ask.

Well, turns out that asking for lofty or ignoble reasons and asking just for the hell of it had the same success rate — around 73 percent, that is.

BUT:

I experienced some of the most sublime moments this year when I least expected them. Here are three of my favorites.

A shopping adventure with the chefs of Elemental, in Seattle

A midnight pedicab hijacking in San Diego.

An unexpected dinner encounter in New York.

3) Is it better to be vague or specific when formulating a request?

I could see this going both ways: If you’re specific, you give the salesperson more to work with and show you have a compelling argument. “Could I get $10 off these pants, since the zipper is sticking?” is a lot more likely to get a yes than, “So, do you have some sort of special deals going on these days?” (That could lead to an answer like “Sorry, can’t think of anything off the top of my head.”)

On the flipside, if you’re specific you could close the door on opportunities. Being vague lets the other party work with you to come up with a solution, rather than feeling like he or she is meeting your demand. An open-ended question is more likely to work for no good reason than “I’d like 5 percent off, please. Just cuz. Cool?”

So, which is it? Vague or specific? Here were my results. (By the way, I was vague 28 times out of 406).

The trick, I’m thinking, is to find ways to turn vague requests into specific ones. Even if you don’t have a reason, make one: “It’s over my budget.”

Finally, I still think it’s better to ask vaguely than not at all. A 61% success rate for simply asking “Do you have any discounts?” or “Any way you could lower that price?” isn’t too shoddy.

I’d love to hear from other askers!! What works for you, and why?

4) Is it better to ask alone, or with a wingman?

This year was really a group project. Every time I asked, someone answered.

But another key group was the people I was with, while I asked. Not only for the ideas they bounced back and forth, but for making my requests seem more approachable, more casual, more friendly or funny.

To see if being alone or accompanied works better in different circumstances, I examined this aspect with respect to Money and Other askings (these labels are explained in Day Two). Turns out there’s an interesting phenomenon here:

When I asked for Money — which includes actual cash and any good or service that could be converted to a dollar value — I did better alone. I also asked much more often for money discounts and upgrades/gains by myself. One simple explanation: it’s easier to get a financial benefit alone, since a merchant will less likely agree to a request if you blare it to the whole store. Second, many of these were about me taking care of business — tracking down money people or institutions owed me, negotiating services. Not the kind of thing you do while hanging out with friends.

But for the Other category — asking for time, convenience, fun, access and info — I did much better when I was with someone else. That’s because those requests are, in essence, social. My very shakey theory is that being part of a group makes the asker appear more likeable. She walks into a room laughing and looking lively. By the time she makes her move, she’s already looking cool and/or disarming. Of course someone would be happy to lend her a cell phone or tell her how to play an Indian double-flute. On the other hand, if she’s alone, she might look creepy, sketchy, lonely or just plain pushy. That entourage makes all the difference.

Ah, humanity.

This is a very rough interpretation… but enough for tonight… I think I’ll stop right… right… here!

Next: Who’s most generous? and Concluding comments

I’m excited! Not one thing in particular. More like… grad school almost done, a few job possibilities around the corner, snagged two new Google voice telephone numbers, possible travel to NY and Montreal coming up in August, some top secret interesting developments looming and… it’s my Grandma’s birthday today!!

The big 88.

Happy Birthday, Tzush!!!

We went to Bahia, a Mexican joint, for lunch. Here she is double-strawing a daiquiri. I will keep this picture with me and look at it the next time I feel like complaining or wimping out. About anything in life. Ever. Because that’s a victory shot if I’ve ever seen one.

Cheers!!!! Salud!!! NOROC!!!

If you’re getting tired of the charts and just want to launch into Year Two of Asking, fear not: I’m almost done! The regular Daily Asker will be back in a few days! But first…

Today we’re going to look at something I was really curious about at the start of the project: What’s the best way to ask?

1) Is it better to ask, negotiate or persuade?

I asked 324 times, negotiated 31 times, and persuaded 50 times.

By which method worked better, I merely mean that it is correlated with compliance with my request. This doesn’t show that asking led to juicier or cooler gains, or even more gains. Just that it happened to work more often. Maybe I asked for simpler things, which were immediately granted. Or maybe not!

The fact that I opted for asking most often could mean either I was aiming too low (and didn’t need to persuade) or that people around me weren’t in negotiation mode: I asked and they agreed, period. No back and forth.

What this suggests:

1. Simple asking is the lowest “investment” — doesn’t usually take a long time, compared to negotiating and persuading. And look how easy it was to get what I wanted. So, worth a shot.

2. If more people I asked had retorted with their own ideal solution, instead of just giving in, that would have led to more negotiations. Same thing if I’d answered their rejection with an alternative solution, instead of trying just to persuade.

3. Persuasion has a high rejection rate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t work. More likely, I was aiming for things I already knew were hard to obtain. Or, maybe I’m just not very persuasive.

What about a “cross-examination:”

2) Which method works better for getting money, access, info, comfort, time, or fun? (i.e. the categories from day two)

I wish I could find this out, but I don’t have enough data for a cogent analysis. I persuaded someone twice to give me extra time on something, so that’s a 100% success rate. Big whoop. Even if I group the small categories together into Other, the chart looks suspiciously similar to the one above:

Not sure what the take-away points are, here. Any ideas out there?

Moving on to something more revealing:

3) Is it better to be sweet or snappy?

To find out, I classified my attitude while asking in six ways. This is self-reported, i.e. not objective (unlike, say, the gender of who I’m asking or what city I’m in). Which means it’s sketchier than other results, not verifiable, and shaped by however I view the following labels. But let’s see where it leads.

Here is a scale I devised. I did my best to briefly describe each attitude, as well:

1. Meek or doubtful: I used phrases like “I know this is a strange request but” or “I’m really sorry to bother you, but…” Alternately, I rushed things, lowered my voice, slinked around, acted generally like a shitzhu who made a doodoo and knows what’s coming next.

2. Nice: Asked with a smile and a friendly demeanor. I may have chatted before or during the request. This attitude was most common, spanning personal, professional and commercial interactions.

3. Super Special Extra Nice, with Sprinkles: I really focused on the person I was talking to, perhaps paying a compliment, finding common ground, laughing or teasing, and otherwise working it. Also known as flirting, or giving the BFF treatment. At times genuine, at times calculated.

4. Practical: neither hot, nor cold, but efficient and direct. Focused on results. Typically used for solving problems and getting simple answers quickly.

5. W ‘n’ D (Wheel and Deal): Approach and diction of buying and selling. Maybe I stated I was shopping around looking for the best price. Maybe I was selling my ideas or skills to a potential employer, encouraging her to trade contact info on an airplane. The number one goal: let’s make a deal or connection.

6. Hostile: A few requests ended up with me complaining, demanding to speak with a supervisor, expressing my displeasure with a product or service, standing up for myself or someone else, or taking someone to task for an offense.

One more note: Some requests got two labels, since I sometimes was nice and practical, etc. So the result below is greater than how many times I asked.

One question we’ll look at in a later post is which method I used with various groups of people (by gender, profession, context), and how well that worked.

4) Which of these was most effective?

Being nice, and super duper extra nice, were rewarded amply. I don’t think I needed a chart to tell me that. But one more remark: the difference between acting meek and nice, at least for me, can be subtle: you’re smiling and non-aggressive in both, but in one you feel like you shouldn’t claim what you’re asking for, and in the other, you do. Only — look at the difference in results: a whopping 22%.

Food for thought.

Also, I wasn’t meek when the asking got challenging. Quite the opposite. Looking at individual data points, I was meek or apologetic when I felt I was bothering someone for something trivial. So it’s an important reminder (to myself, at least) to keep that chin up. And remember I’m as important and relevant as the other person in that transaction. Silly, simple… but sometimes, easy to overlook. Out of a desire not to impose, bother, shock.

On the flipside, Wow! Looks like hostility/aggression is much more rewarding than meekness. I didn’t resort to it often, but when I felt someone crossed the line, I wasn’t afraid to stand up for myself. And hey, if we couldn’t all get along, at least I got what I wanted more than 70% of the time. Mu ha ha ha.

I was very surprised the practical, goal-oriented approach so rarely succeeded. These questions included: “Could you move your car?” (yes – twice!) and “Can I put up a flyer here?” (no). In some cases, I got rejected because of policy, and maybe I had sensed it wouldn’t be worth devoting time or energy to being sweet and cuddly. But maybe I misjudged, and if I’d tried a little harder — smiled more, made more eye contact, chatted, introduced the question as a flash of inspiration to a problem — that would have helped things along. Been less direct, more personable.

I was also a little surprised (and disappointed, I admit) that the wheel and deal approach — by which I mean, actively showing that I was comparison shopping or trying to bargain — wasn’t more effective. Especially in a recession. When I was simply nice and asked for discounts in commercial settings, that worked a lot better than trying to be explicit about my intentions. Any ideas out there? Would that be a turn-off for a salesperson? Or am I just bad at retail asking?

5) What do preparing, persisting, asking accompanied or alone, and asking for the hell of it all have in common?

The answer, up next, in the How of How.

For anyone who stuck with me to the bottom of the post, it’s Dilbert time:

Why hello there! And an excellent Sunday to you.

A quick side note about asking: I still am! I don’t want to interrupt these reports, but once I’m done here, I’ll fill you in on the latest.

And now, back to

For the past two days I looked at the financial side of things.

From here, I’ll examine the other aspects of this experiment: who were “nicer,” people in Seattle or Boston? (By nice, I mean yielding to my requests.) What about employees of restaurants or doctors’s offices? What kind of approach led to more successes — being friendly, persuasive, or demanding? Which questions were most often met with success, those about bathroom emergencies or odd requests to random strangers? And was it better to ask alone, over the phone, after rehearsing, or totally on the fly? We’ll top it off with those final juicy details you’ve been tying to find out, like, if you’re stuck in a foreign country with no shampoo, how likely is it a local will come to your rescue and donate two mini bottles of hotel quality suds?

Today we’re looking at location.

1) Where did I ask?

Over the course of the year, I spent at least a day in a bunch of cities and towns, asking everywhere. These included both financial negotiations and various other requests. To simplify, I’ve grouped them into 12 locations. Some are cities, while others are regions or entire countries. (I tried to have at least five data points per spot, so I didn’t split up Paris and Nice, for example.)

San Diego includes L.A., where I asked about 5 times. And locations include phone requests — like when I called to get a discount on a hotel room in Hawaii and talked to an employee there.

Since that chart is a little hard to decipher, here are the narrowest pie slivers from above, by frequency:

This doesn’t tell you anything about asking; basically, it’s where I spent the last year and where my phone calls were directed. First relevant question:

2) How likely was I to get what I asked for in various places?

Now let’s see how many times I was successful in each location versus the number of requests there:

Since I asked most frequently in San Diego (269 times), that’s a good estimate of how often I was successful overall. In fact, it’s very close the year’s overall success rate of 73%. That’s not because San Diegans are averagely responsive to asking — but because the average success rate is based mostly on San Diego interactions. Just thought I’d mention that.

3) Does that mean Greeks are generous and Texans are tightwads?

Yesterday I stated that graphs never lie.

But I was lying.

These success rates are actually totally unreliable. Some places have very little data, and in most cases the likelihood of getting what I asked for was actually shaped by the reason for the interaction or various other factors — not the location itself (we’ll get into those factors in the next posts).

Here are a few examples to illustrate why the Location success rates are sketchy, and some context to better interpret those results.

If we go by the numbers above, it seems that my askings were always answered in Greece. So those locals must be reeeeally generous.

Indeed, not a soul turned me away. Efkaristo! The reason, however, is not that Greeks were moved by some intrinsic desire to indulge me. Rather, I was a tourist, and usually at a disadvantage — lost, missing a hotel room, clueless about the language and/or in desperate need of a shower. As a result, I suspect, my Greek benefactors decided to reach out and help out a fellow human. When it comes to having a question answered, I’d hope that basic needs above anything else would be met with a warm and friendly “ne” (that’s “yes” in Greek). But the questions I asked were, well, pathetic. And easy to handle. (I also spent very little time there, so it’s a limited sample.)

Boston is an interesting case. I interacted with people there about 2 weeks this year. Many of those requests involve grad school and administrative issues (insurance, DMV, sorting out a diploma, trying to get into the library, get out of the library). So the lower rate is not because the good people of Boston suck — more like the rules do. And I didn’t need a bar graph to tell me that. The parking tickets I collected over the years are proof enough.

Onward.

The low rate in Texas is also somewhat misleading. I focused on retail discounts, trying 3 times in 6 days. But Texas also introduced me to some really kind people: Grace, who opened up her house and showed my dad and I around; the employee of my favorite fajita place on the planet, who not only taught me to prepare good fajita meat, but also gave me a coupon for $10 off my next meal; and a doctor who gave me a sinus consultation at a dinner party. So it seems like outside malls, Texans are givers. At least, the three I hung out with were.

See the problem?

Based on such limited data, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about individual places.

4) Is there anything at all we can learn about locations and responsiveness to La Roxy’s requests?

The overall success rate of 73% was drawn from 406 data points. Since many of these locations have too small a sample, what I can do is regroup them in bigger categories, and see what emerges. (For you statistical types: I tried some of these with and without the San Diego results, to see if that was affecting the averages, and the results usually came out the same either way. Hmm.)

The cartographic smackdown

Made possible by funding from the Department of Homeland Insecurity: Which people gave in more to La Roxy’s requests, Americans or residents of other lands?

Next, is it true that good country people have bigger hearts, or was Flannery O’Connor onto something? AKA: Where did I ask more successfully, in cities or in small towns and rural desinations?

If I were to head on a roadtrip, where would I have better shot at getting what I ask for? I-5, I-40 or I-95?

Finally, a bit of soul searching, and future planning: Have I lived in asking friendly places?

So that’s that.

If you have questions about what I’ve done, or suggestions for this or future analyses, leave a comment below or shoot me an email!

Next: How did I ask?