In late October I asked the furniture refinisher when he expected to have my table repaired. He said, "We're promising deliveries for Christmas."

By the end of January, I had heard nothing, so I called to cancel the job and to ask him to return my precious antique.

"No problem," he said.

Ten weeks later, I had four lonely chairs, but still, no table. Spring had arrived, the birds were singing, but I wasn't.

Frustrated, I got him on the phone, and asked with an ominous tone: "When are you going to return my table, PLEASE?"

Reflexively, he responded: "Would to-to-tomorrow be ok?"

At the appointed time he and two workers hoisted my missing possession into place.

To my surprise, he had cleaned it and had repaired it, as I had originally requested, but there was no sign of an invoice.

A strange turn of events this was, Yoda might have observed.

Then, it hit me. He was teaching me a powerful customer satisfaction lesson:

"Mild" anger gets results, especially when kindness and patience have been ignored.

It reminds me of the persuasive insight attributed to gangster Al Capone: A smile and a gun are more effective than a smile, by itself.

On one level, this is a sad commentary. We don't expect even slightly hostile communications to help us to get our way, or to make the world a better place.

Yet, deep down, as animals, we know that we have to notify predators and those who would encroach upon our turf and our possessions that they shouldn't tread on us.

Dogs say it through growls and postures that warn, "Go no farther, or I'll attack."

Unfortunately, most customers don't use a mild-anger setting. They seem to go from nice-to-ballistic in one, dramatic step

. Consequently, they're branded as "crazies" by customer service reps and others, making it harder on everyone to resolve any underlying problems.

In retrospect, I think I got lucky in communicating with the furniture fellow.

When I picked up the phone to call him, I didn't expect to append the word, "please" to my question, "When are you going to return my table?"

But I wanted to maintain a certain degree of dignity, and to give him a chance to redeem himself--which he did right away.

We shook hands after the table was set into place. Looking very contrite, he shuffled backwards through the still open front door, without uttering a word.

You might say, we both benefited after I discovered my mild-anger setting.

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