Flashbacks of Tax Law

This quote makes me think Mark Twain took tax law before:

"The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it."

Negotiator-self-portraits (see previous post)

School of Hard Knocks

I loved the negotiation workshop because I felt like I was in 2nd Grade again.

You learn a lot in a no-pressure environment, all your classmates are your buddies, and above all, you get to draw a potrait of yourself at the beginning and end of the course to see how much you've learned/changed.

Sadly, some students' after-picture came out arguably worse.

One guy explained his portrait by saying, "The before-me is smiling because I like making win-win deals. But the after-me is no longer smiling because I realize that people can totally take advantage of your cooperative spirit and totally screw you over."

Another student who had an optimistic before-portrait amended it by drawing some frowny faces to indicate his freshly learned lesson: some people are just a pain in the arse to negotiate with because they have unreasonably high demands and won't budge from them.

I myself learned to be more skeptical and untrusting too. Didn't think I could get any more cynical, eh? Lawschool will do this to you. There should be a gate at the entrance of campus with the enscription: Abandon innocence all who enter here.

Don't hate the player...

This week I learned that there are two Christinas.

One is the Real Christina. She is pretty upfront, pessimistic in her forecasts, hates playing mind games, likes to meet people more than halfway, and never insists on her opinions...they are all only half-formed anyway.

That Christina got her butt kicked around in Negotiation Workshops last week and made terrible deals for her pretend clients. In one particularly botched negotiation I said my client would work for essentially $5,000 when the going rate was actually $22,000. Oops.

So say hello to Christina Number Two. She's a tough, hard-bargaining, over-confidant, trash-talking blowhard. She challenges every assumption that is favorable to the other side and exaggerates her own positional strength (ad nauseum). She asks for twice what she would be happy with and four times what would be fair. She feels like an overly aggressive alpha male.

I hate Christina Number Two. But in a world of liers, theives, and scammers, it's play or be played, right?

Or maybe there's a way to change the game...