Alan S. Oser

“Learn by doing," I was taught. It’s true, but there are other ways. Eavesdropping is one of them.

I eavesdropped to good effect a few years ago at a restaurant in Manhattan. I was alone at a table waiting for a friend who never showed up. At a table close by a well-dressed middle-aged man was having lunch with a well-dressed middle-aged woman. Sipping coffee and eventually eating a turkey burger as I waited in vain, I listened to their conversation for half an hour. The man told this story:

“My wife was dying to buy the house. I told her I’d get it for her if she made me two promises. While I’m negotiating with the guy, never ask me how it’s going. Keep silent! And if I fail, forgive me. So she said all right. Then I made an offer, but it was rejected. I waited two weeks and I called the broker and asked if the house had been sold. She said it hadn’t, so I made another offer – $5,000 lower. That was rejected too. A week later I called back and the house still wasn’t sold, so I offered $5,000 less. I did this three times, and my third offer was accepted – $15,000 below my first offer.”

A year later I was in art gallery in New Orleans. A certain painting captivated me. It was selling for $4,000, but I thought that was too high. I offered $3,000. The look I received from the gallery owner left me feeling unwelcome, so I withdrew to the street. A few days later I returned to the gallery prepared to offer $2,500, but the painting had been sold. So much for eavesdropping.

Or perhaps I am merely a poor negotiator. A sound negotiator must be willing to accept rejection, as my restaurant tipster realized when he made his wife promise she would not criticize him for failure. But when I want something, I do not want to bargain. I am not content with disappointment. I will pay the asking price. Greed must be written on my face. I have never bargained successfully for anything.

I have met at least one prominent businessman who adhered successfully to these principles. That was Paul Reichmann, the leading figure in the subsequently defunct Canadian real estate company Olympia & York. His company was the initial developer of office buildings at Battery Park City, the mixed residential and commercial “city within a city” in Lower Manhattan. Reichmann had a reputation for agreeing without hesitation to a seller’s asking price once he had decided to buy property for development. He stunned the real-estate community in New York when he accepted the Battery Park City Authority’s terms for sites that were ready for development.

Reichmann’s approach was to save money by leasing early and building rapidly, not by paying a low land price. Construction loans are expensive, and each day sliced off the time in which the loan is outstanding can save thousands of dollars. In the end Olympia & York built and leased the space in what it called the World Financial Center with remarkable speed. Other developers understood the desirability of this approach of course. But Olympia & York had the benefit of unusually strong financial backing in Canada – strong enough to allow it to take risks others did not dare to take. In the end, an even bigger risk in London undid Olympia & York. Win a few, lose a few.

The great real estate investor Harry Helmsley was not known as a bargainer either. He was known for his silence. Two young partners were once trying to buy a building from him. They came to see him about it. They made an offer, and he merely stared. He may have cleared his throat. They made a higher offer and all he said was “ahem.” They chatted aimlessly with him, and finally made a third offer, close to his asking price. He shifted in his seat but said nothing. After more conversation they blurted out another offer – his asking price. He smiled graciously and accepted.

When Helmsley was the buyer he would make one offer and one offer only; the seller could take it or leave it. Helmsley was famous for that.

The uses of silence go well beyond the bargaining table. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Abraham Lincoln is credited with originating that bit of wisdom, but the reward for applying it may be better than the advice suggests. Far from being taken as a fool, the silent are frequently taken for the wise, especially when all those speaking are busy removing all doubt about their foolishness.

To be taken for a fool in public discussion of controversial issues all one has to do is adopt a tone of outspoken assurance about the future consequences of any particular course of action. Long-term outcomes of decisions on public matters are not predictable. The only people who lose sight of this are those who are emotionally bound to a current course of action and are outspoken in its defense. They may be persuasive with some people, but most will recoil from over-the-top advocacy. (On the other hand, it is often persuasive to be outspoken on what not to do.)

It is easier to recommend the policy of silence than to follow it. I can recall only one instance in life when I followed this policy to advantage. As a freshman in college I found myself standing naked next to a dozen other young men at the edge of a swimming pool, about to plunge in to prove to an instructor that we could swim well enough to meet a mandatory freshman physical education requirement without taking a swimming course. To do this we had to demonstrate that we could swim six full laps.

For me this would be impossible. I am a rotten swimmer, and not surprisingly I dislike swimming. Although I had persuaded myself that a swimming course would do me good, I was hoping against hope that I wouldn’t have to take it.

I jumped into the pool with my classmates and swam as long as I could, at my usual snail’s pace. After four laps I was exhausted, and I pulled myself out.

As it happened, everyone else was emerging from the pool at about the same time, having finished six laps. The instructor walked down the line of swimmers waiting at the edge of pool to hear their fate. He nodded approvingly as he passed them, but he stopped when he got to me. He eyed me suspiciously. “Did you do six laps?” he asked. I looked at him with an expression that I hoped implied that I was about to speak, but I didn’t. The instructor waited briefly and then moved on. He must have taken my silence for affirmation. So I never took swimming in college, and I’m still a rotten swimmer.

I should not boast about silence with intent to deceive. Usually deception leads to disastrous consequences. The only time I ever wormed my way out of a traffic ticket for a vehicular offense I spoke truthfully. An officer in a patrol car in Maine pulled me over to the curb and asked me why I was speeding. “I can’t tell you because you would never believe me,” I said, looking downcast. This was the truth, the circumstances being too complicated to be believable. The answer seemed to weigh with the traffic cop. “You are right,” he said. “If you had given me any excuse at all, I wouldn’t have believed you.” And he let me go.