The 48 Laws of Power in Practice

**Law 19: Know who you are dealing with - do not offend the wrong person.

Do not make the wrong person your enemy, or it will backfire on you.

Application-

This chapter describes the types of people you don't want to offend. Here is my interpretation and some examples.

1) Arrogant and Proud -

Reason: Easy to anger and become an enemy.

Example: Regina George from Mean Girls

2) The Hopelessly Insecure -

Reason: They will take everything you say as an attack against them, so they attack others constantly.

Example: Madeline Mackenzie from Big Little Lies

3) Mr.(s) Suspicious -

Reason: Everyone is out to get them. On the other hand, they are easy to deceive.

Example:  Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol

4) The Serpent with a Long Memory -

Reason: They might not react right away, but will hold a grudge and try to ruin you later.

Example: The Count of Montecristo

5) The Plain, Unassuming, and Often Unintelligent-

Reason: They just don't get it so their responses won't be rational. If you play the game of power with them, it will tire you out instead.

Example: Mr. Magoo, either main character of Dumb and Dumber

When keeping it real goes wrong...

I was driving back from lunch with a coworker. By our office, two freeways exit at the same place and need to merge onto the same road. Right after the merge, there is a stoplight, so if you wanted to make a right turn,  you had to merge and slow to a stop pretty quickly. On this day, I had to make the right turn to get back to work. A guy was merging from the other freeway behind me, who was driving fast and had to screech to a halt.

He must have felt that I cut him off because he honked his horn at me for several seconds. He then followed me through the right turn and pulled up next to me. I looked over and saw his big frantic eyes and angry face, as he aggressively motioned for me to roll down my window. I decided I would do no such thing and looked away instead.

Then I had to stop for a red light. We were a few cars apart. My co-worker and I were both shaken at this point. I could not wait until the light turned green; we were only two blocks from the office parking garage now. I checked my rearview mirror to keep track of where the other car was. To my horror, I saw a large intimidating man stepping out of the car. As he walked over to us, he was rolling up his sleeves!

In the car, we were both panicking. All I could think of was we were going to be on the news, like other road rage incidents that have led to violence. It suddenly struck me to pull out my phone and start taking photos.  I didn't even have the wherewithal to take a video, which is what I should have done at that moment. As the man got closer, he saw me with my phone camera pointed at him. That gave him pause. Then, to my relief, he turned around and got back into his car. To this day, I don't know what would have happened I hadn't pulled out my phone.

Reflecting back, the man probably had a type 1 personality above. Let this story be a cautionary tale. Even if you don't mean to offend someone, you could be dealing with real consequences when you come across certain types of people.