I agree with Dan and Sah. Like everything in life, balance is the key — and there’s a wide, wide range of choices between being rudely agressive and being a doormat. By respecting both others and ourselves, and, by extension, our time and others’ time, it’s really not that difficult to arrive at a a golden mean of polite assertiveness. (Except, perhaps, for the current lack of public role models — but that’s another story, sort of.)

Those of us who need to learn to be assertive and protect our time will be put off the Parsons’ advice, and those need to learn to be more respectful of others certainly don’t need his advice.