RAGING BULLS 

A friend of mine found a blender blade in her acai bowl today.

Fortunately, she wasn't injured.

When she notified the owner, he said, "Sorry about that. Here's a coupon for a free bowl."

She was pissed. She charged at the owner like a raging bull: ”This could have split my tongue wide open!”

Jean-Louis Gassée, who used to run Apple France, describes this situation as the choice of the two tokens.

When you deal with an upset person, you can choose to take a token that subconsciously says, "It's not a big deal," or the token that says, "It's the end of the world." Whichever token you pick, they'll choose the other.

If the owner chose the "it's the end of the world" token, he might have said something like this:

"OMG! I'm so sorry. Are you okay? I'm so embarrassed. Here's a punch card for 25 bowls. I know this doesn't make up for the trauma this caused you. I'm going to shut down the store until every blender passes an inspection test. I'm also going to bring this to the manufacturer's attention. Again I am so sorry about this."

If the owner said that, my friend wouldn't have been so pissed because she would have chosen the "it's not a big deal" token.

The takeaway?

When you experience a raging bull, choose your token wisely.