The customer may try to ______ you to react, using hostile or verbal attacks.

• A. compliment
• B. bait
• C. threaten
• D. ignore

Answer: (B)

People may try to bait you into reacting by using hostility or verbal attacks. Baiting is about luring someone to respond, often by provoking with insults or pressure so emotion takes over and the situation escalates. That’s exactly what the sentence describes—the attempt to provoke a reaction.

Complimenting isn’t about provoking a hostile response, and threatening would itself be the act of issuing a threat rather than the tactic to elicit a reaction. Ignoring is a response strategy, not the tactic used to draw you into reacting. So bait is the correct choice because it captures the idea of deliberately provoking a reaction.