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Just ask
How can we get other people to do something for us? Perhaps it’s easier than we imagine
In Blake Edwards’ 1975 movie The Return of the Pink Panther, Peter Sellers (playing Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the Sûreté) arrives at a hotel. After a struggle with a revolving door, he successfully ends up in the lobby. A smartly dressed man approaches him, asking “Can I take your coat?” Clouseau obliges, and the man follows up with requests for Clouseau’s gloves and hat, then promptly leaves the hotel, puts on the hat and then drives off in an open top car with a final wave to the perplexed policeman.
The compliant kind
The scene is a fine illustration of the comic talents of both the actor and the director. But is it also a realistic example of how easy it is to steal people’s accessories? We may think that what befalls the hapless (and fictional) policeman could not possibly happen to us, sharp cookies as we are.
And still. In one of his TV shows, the British illusionist and mentalist Derren Brown demonstrated how easy it is to make people hand over not their coat, gloves and hat, but their watch, wallet, phone and house…
