Something's gone wrong, it wasn't your fault, and you want it put right. No shouting required — just the right words, warmly delivered.
Ten days ago you treated yourself to a rather expensive coffee machine — the sleek one you'd been eyeing for months. This morning it made a promising gurgle, flashed every light on the front, and died. Not so much as a dribble.
So here you are, back at the shop, box under your arm, receipt in your pocket, and a small speech rehearsed in your head. You're not angry, exactly — you're disappointed, and you'd quite like your money's worth. The trick is that the person behind the counter will meet you with a wall of very reasonable-sounding reasons why none of this is their problem. Your job is to be so pleasant, and so immovable, that saying "no" to you becomes more trouble than saying "yes".
Behind the returns desk: an assistant who has heard "it just stopped working" fifteen times today, and whose first instinct — through no fault of their own — is to send you somewhere else.
Polite, calm, and completely unwilling to leave without a fair result. You bought something faulty; you want it sorted; you will smile the whole way through.
Not unkind — just tired, and armed with a script of policies, windows and "you'll have to contact the manufacturer". Fair, in the end, if you make saying yes the easy option.
Here's your toolkit. You don't need to memorise it. Read each phrase, say it out loud once, and pick the ones that sound like you. You'll have it open while you practise.
Draw a card and say what you'd say, out loud, in one or two sentences. Use your own words or the toolkit. Then peek at one possible answer.
Done a few rounds? Try again with the toolkit covered. When it flows, you're ready to hear them in a real conversation.
Read it out loud, one role each, then swap. Spot as many phrases from your toolkit as you can, and listen for how the customer stays warm while every "no" quietly loses ground.
1. The assistant offers three ways to make the problem go away before finally agreeing — "contact the manufacturer", the fourteen-day window, and a repair. How does the customer take each one apart without ever getting cross?
2. The customer keeps stressing that the machine is "faulty" and not a "change of mind". Why does that one distinction matter so much to how the conversation goes?
3. In the end the customer doesn't get the identical machine back — they get something better. What was the compromise, and which of the customer's moves made the assistant willing to offer it?
No script this time. You'll have a real conversation with a real person. They have their own mind, and you have a goal.
Say each step once, out loud, in your own words. No writing, no peeking at the phrases.
Pick your situation. Your partner plays the other person.
🏆 You win when they say yes, and they still like you.
Start the scene first. Partway through, draw a card. Whatever it says, it just happened.
Now you're on the other side. Your partner takes your old part.
Draw another twist whenever you like.
Tick what you actually did, in either seat.
Run it one more time. Draw a twist before you start, and try to reach a good result faster than before.
In 1773, a shipload of tea sat in Boston Harbour, and with it a tax the American colonists had never agreed to. Their complaint was simple and reasonable: no taxation without representation. They had written the letters, argued the case, asked politely — and been ignored.
So one December night, they stopped asking. They boarded the ships and tipped ninety thousand pounds of tea into the sea — history's most expensive returned product, complaint escalated to the very top.
You're standing at a far friendlier counter. But it's the same old game: state your case, stay firm, and make it clear you won't quietly go away. The difference is that you get to win with charm — and keep the tea.