What is the biggest, most genuine complement you ever recieved?

[Lobsang]

Mine is from someone I'd rather forget (and had done until I was inspired to write this thread)


It was...

"Peter, you have a way with words"


You have no idea what it feels like to hear that for someone who craves to be an author.

So what compliment did you receive that made you feel like you were on top of the world?

I would like to say that compliments from family members don't count because they are genetically predisposed to complement you with a complete lack of truthfulness - especially your mum.


But I won't.

[Llama Llogophile]

One day my work partner didn't come in, so I spent the day with a replacement. He had been a sub all over our company, but I'd never worked with him previously. At the end of the day, after having watched me run things, he said very simply and frankly, "You know Mach - you are a real pro."

BTW: This is my standard question in getting-to-know-you situations. I've gotten some interesting responses.

[Eonwe]

"You've inspired me, and I've decided to minor in piano at college and dedicate my minor to you."

[jali]

The best compliment I've ever received was from my son Charles (20) when he was about 4 or 5 years old.

I told him how happy I was to have him as my son and his response, "Even if you weren't my Mommy, I would still run to you."

I have tears in my eyes now remembering the moment.

My second best compliment was from my grandson, Hassan. He said,"Grandma, you KNOW you're my boy."

[Clothahump]

I had a young lady who started in my Taekwondo school as a White Belt and worked up to 2nd Degree Black Belt before she left for college. When she started, she was tremendously shy. At her 2nd Degree testing, she was calm, poised, accurate and confident.

Just after her testing ended, her parents came up and said thanks. At least her dad did; her mother broke down and started to cry. She hugged SWMBO and me both and said, "Thank you both for what you have done for our daughter."

That is why I teach. I'll never make a penny out of that school and I lose money regularly. But I am touching people's lives in a positive manner.

[lissener]

My sister and I were arguing about something once, and finally she just rolled her eyes and said with exasperation, "I don't know why we're even arguing, we both know you're probably right."

[Anaamika]

"You're just like your grandfather."

From someone who positively revered my grandfather.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Somewhere during my later college years I had a part time file clerk job in a small law office. This was roughly in the Precambrian Era before the time of Internships, when jobs worked by college students weren't expected to be professional training for what they were studying. Although, in some ways, that job showed me a talent I never knew I had, namely, remembering under what pile of paper in whose office I had seen something, two and a half weeks ago. But anyway, the daughter of one of the partners was about the same age, cute as hell, and also working as a gofer for the summer. That, and the way she would have me collect the sorted mail from her lap to pass out to the attorneys, almost makes me wonder if she was flirting. .

Years later the lead singer of the band I was in said my guitar solos "got to him". How cool is that? I don't think I'm actually a terribly good lead player, rather I'm better at the fills and chords. The later story of that band is too bad; we had jettisoned the other guitarist, who was musically very much in the way, and were coalescing into a tight unit--then the singer, on a visit back East, got busted for a bar fight and put away for nearly a year on assault.

[chacoguy]

Dad, I'm proud of the way I was raised; thank you.

[matt_mcl]

I can't confirm that this was the highest compliment I've ever received, but it sticks in my mind. I was out partying with some friends, including a girl (Heather) who I'd just met and would subsequently become good friends with. I had gotten a little bit tipsy and garrulous, and after a while I apologized and said, "I must be impossible."

She said, "You're not impossible, dear, just improbable."

[threnodyangelfire]

From my husband. I received copies of my very first published book this week, and I'm not one to boast. He has taken it everywhere with him and shown everyone we know. His smile and his actions show that he's so proud of me and loves me so much. And that's the greatest compliment I've ever had.

[blondebear]

Two from an old girlfriend:

"I admire your integrity."

"That was the best time of my life!"

[purple haze]

"We're so proud of you" from mom and dad. They never fail to support me just when I need it. I quit my job and went back to school full time, and now work part time for much less pay. There are times when I wonder what the heck I'm doing, but my folks help me to have faith in myself.

[EpicNonsense]

Originally Posted by blondebear

"That was the best time of my life!"

I got something along these lines but I think it was just to encourage me to put in a little more effort...


Other than that, "Cool shirt" seems to be the only genuine compliment I really get.

[horsetech]

One of my bosses (Boss A) at my last job (small equine vet practice) called me "super tech" this spring. I tried my heart out for that job, I loved that job, and I was seemingly invisible to the other boss at the time (except when I was offending him by being too visible at doing my job when he was around). Boss A is one of the most honest and sincere people I know; he works hard and inspires those around him to work hard as well (or, at least, that is the effect he had on me). That was one of the best working relationships I have ever had. It was defined by a great deal of mutual respect and hard work on both sides. He is a large part of why I am pursuing the veterinary profession. I am friends with him and his wife, but that day was about him validating my work ethic and investment in my duties.

[T. Slothrop]

best complement would be my wife.

best compliment would be "your Chinese is very good" (almost daily - in Chinese)

[Gatopescado]

I was hangin' around at a buddies house, drinking beer, that I brought myself (they don't drink), gettin' that 6-pack buzz and joking around with his kids. His son asked me something (I don't remember what) and I gave him some kind of obtuse BS answer. He said to me, "Your a liar! I don't trust you!". I told him, "Smart boy! Never trust me with anything but your life".

His dad, who almost never speaks, looks over at his kid and says with total seriousness, "Thats absolutely true. This man has saved my life many times. If its important, you can count on him."

That made me feel pretty good. And I had saved his bacon once or twice. Not sure he would have "died", except that one time. Or maybe it was just the beer?

[Pyper]

My very smart friend has told me and other people that I am the smartest person she has ever met.

Maybe she just hangs out with a lot of dumb people.

[meenie7]

Similar to Anaamika, I had a woman who had been friends with my grandma, who was a sweet, humble, loving person who never had a bad word to say about anyone, say to me that I looked just like her, and then, after we talked awhile, that I was just like her. *sniffle*

[Autolycus]

I do get a lot of 'nice T-shirt' comments, but as for a genuine compliment? I don't really have anything that sticks out in my mind, and occasionally people will make positive remarks about my humor and intelligence, but apart from that I don't really get complimented much ever, and definitely there hasn't been any one defining super-powerful moment. Geez, now I feel kinda bummed out. Oh well.

[appleciders]

"You know, I'm beginning to have some respect for you as a person."

That's the closest one of my professors has ever come to praising anything, as far as I know. I was flattered. No, really.

[DLuxN8R-13]

"(Myothername)*, when I came out and started transitioning, my mom went out and got me a copy of [your book]*, and your poetry really was an inspiration to me, and gave me a lot more nerve to be upfront with people, especially in my writing. Thanks, dude."--said to me by a young performance poet who I had just gone up to to congratulate for the hot set he'd just done. I'm pretty hardboiled, but it still choked me up when he told me that.

*Details withheld because they're not the point of the story.

[Enginerd]

Two of them come to mind immediately.

"[Enginerd's real name] is the smartest guy I know." Said by my dad last Christmas. My dad has a master's degree from Johns Hopkins.

I'm a TA for an upper level earth science class while I'm pursuing a PhD. A first year master's student said to me once, "you're going to be a great professor - I come in here and five minutes later I've answered the question I wanted to ask you." It was just an offhand remark, but it's something that I don't think I'll ever forget.

[Maastricht]

I got an text-message once from by boyfriend, who, at the time, lived with a nice roommate. He told me the roommate had remarked casually: " You know, I don't know how she does it, but talking with Maastricht always gives me energy".

And another one I cherish: I taught an amateur botanist's class. One of the remarks on the evaluation form was: "I didn't know it was possible to learn so much in three fun lessons".

[Petrobey Mavromihalis]

I had a tutorials one term at university with one of the leading feminist literary scholars in the world. Near the end of the term she called me a "Neanderthal".

I'm not entirely sure she meant me to take it as a compliment.

[3acresandatruck]

The ones I can think of all involved work; this episode was the last and maybe the best. About 18 months after I left employment, I went downtown for lunch with my last boss. As she ranted mildly about the corporation inducing me to leave, she mentioned that they'd been through five people trying to replace me and it wasn't working out at all. I was astonished that they'd brought in and eliminated five people in a row so quickly...they NEVER fired people for incompetence. No, no, no! she tells me...not five peope in a row. All five are working the in one job I used to have and they can't keep up. And the client organizations are screaming constantly and yelling at her for letting the nice guy go. I asked her who was the nice guy and what happened to him. You were the nice guy. Me? I was a raving lunatic. Sure you were, she laughs, but you were a friendly raving lunatic and you always got the job done. That's when she told me the job had originally been planned for three people when I first transferred in. When they realized I was doing all the work after about four days on the job, they just never filled any of the other positions. (I never knew that; I thought it was a one-man job.) Apparently, as the workload increased, I just kept up with it. When I left, she figured I was doing the work of six to ten sane people.

So, there you go...I'm a friendly raving lunatic!

[Nava]

I had a similar one to Petrobey's.

When I was in Grad School, one of the teachers, an old-school Physical Chemist had brought in a guest speaker who'd built a calorimeter. A calorimeter is a machine for measuring the heat absorbed or emitted by a chemical reaction; if you know "how much heat" and "how much reaction" you can calculate the change in internal energy. Previous work by this same guy gave results with 8 figures and a 10% error. The new machine gave results with 16 figures and a 10% error. I pointed out that I fail to see "we set double precision" as any kind of chemical advance and asked what exactly were we learning with the new machine that we couldn't learn with the old one... in the end, the question came up to "ok, so what is it for?"

The Prof, exasperated, said "young lady, with questions like those you sound like an engineer!"

Yup. Ingeniero Quimico Superior (Chemical Engineer), specialty Orgo, thesis in Stats, and I'd still like to know what's the point of getting 16 figures when 15 of them might as well have been picked at random...



When I was in college in Barcelona I used to buy my comics (and, when money allowed, books) in English from Gigamesh. The owner once told me "every edition I know of is sold out, but if I ever find a copy of Neuromancer I'll save it for you. Cristina and you are the only people I know of who may be able to read that in English." Cristina has been one of Terry Pratchett's translators and her work is superb.



3acres, you're a friendly and efficient raving lunatic.

[even sven]

A friends of mine just said "I like you because you are one of the only people here who I can't picture ten years from now."

[Tracy Lord]

I was quite active in my high school drama society, and my final senior role was (no surprise here) Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story. The Monday after our first weekend run, our school librarian stopped me in the hall. She said, "I've been watching you in plays since you were a freshman, and I know you're going to go places. I saw the show on Saturday. You were just as good as Katharine Hepburn – and prettier!"

[Sapo]

"please talk to him, people listen when you talk"

[accidentalyuppie]

I got a good one last week.

I was at a job meeting. There are a lot of scheduling problems on the job, none of which are my doing.

So as we were meeting I came up with some (if I might say so myself) rather inspired solutions to the problems and laid them out to the construction company.

Then as I said goodbye, the construction manager smiles and says to me "Just one more thing, could you fix the economy before you go?"

I was very flattered.

[jjimm]

The other day my roommate asked me something, and when I replied, she said "you're better than Google".

[Nightingale]

"If Daina had lived, I would have wanted her to be like you."

Daina is my cousin's baby; she lived a little less than a day. I almost cried when he said that to me.

[Shirley Ujest]

From my old boss, " You've got moxie!"


From one of my best friends, explaining to her son who felt bad for the guy who dries off the cars at the end of the car wash and she explained that sometimes people take an extra job that is brainless to make a little extra cash to pay the bills ( Gas Prices were sky high.) and sometimes that is the only job they can get when there are no other jobs ( Michigan!) And sometimes people just don't make good choices or do anything with their education (go to college) and go no where in life.

Somehow my name came up. ( I wasn't in the car.) " What does Shirley do?"

My girlfriend flinched and sallied forth, " She's a genius that didn't have any money for college." ( bits about my dad dying and no money...tale...)

" But what does she do?"

"She stocks cheese at the MegaHell."*

This brought gales of laughter to every kid in the suburban.








*I've since quit this desireable job for the comforts of total slackerdom. Tired of my bi-polar, panic attack ridden supervisor's passive agressive crapping on me. I wouldn't take that kind of crappy supervisiory twaddle for 30K, I won't do it for minimum wage.

[Licentious Ectomorph]

These might sound shallow and cocky, but understand that my self-esteem is lukewarm on the best of days, so such things mean a lot to me:

"Your parents must be extremely beautiful people."

and

"You are the sexiest man alive in a cowboy hat. You almost give me a heart attack."

[SanVito]

From my childhood next door neighbour:

'I've named my daughter Katie after you, because the name fills me with memories of an idyllically happy childhood'.

From another friend: 'will you be my phone-a-friend' Yay, she thinks I'm brainy!

[Annie-Xmas]

A total stranger stopped me on the street one day and said "I just want to say "Thank You." I see you walking every day and I see how thin you are. I finally said to myself "If she can walk every day, so can I. In four months I've lost fifty pounds."

Proof that you never know when you might be inspiring someone.

[Gukumatz]

Back when I worked as a receptionist at a gas plant under construction's hotell for the workers, I was sent down to set up a satellite facility so the Securitas employees could check and vet new day-arrivals (i.e., people who arrived at the hotel and went to work on the same day, as opposed to the normal business which was people came, got oriented and rested for two days and then went to work.) Setting up the office, the computers, connecting to the database and setting up an extra power outlet as well as configuring the software, installing normal office and everyday-applications and synchronizing it with the gate surveilance camera took me the better part of seven hours.

I was later told the following conversation had taken place between my boss and the Securitas overseer:

SBoss: "M., you sent one guy here to do this? This is a two-day job for four different people! This is going to take bloody ages and I need the setup by monday! [This was a saturday]"

My Boss: "Relax. He's schitzophrenic."

SBoss: "I'm serious!"

My Boss: "So am I. Don't tell him."

Aside from going down to tweak the control once on sunday morning and cowriting a short troubleshooting manual on monday morning with the guy who would operate it after work on sunday, everything was in working order come monday. And this little piggy got a $3 hourly raise.

[Sigmagirl]

At my old job, people would come to me for all kinds of stuff. Spelling, grammar, help with their kids' homework, proofreading their resumes, advice on college essays, it was endless. I was very free with my time but occasionally was busy and would ask, "Why don't you look it up on the internet?" One woman was puzzled and answered, "We don't use that. We have you."

[Jennyrosity]

A friend once commented on how yound she thinks I look, saying if she didn't know she'd think I was about 19 (I was 28 at the time). Another friend butted in and said "Nah, early twenties, maybe, but you don't get teenagers who are as sorted as Jen".

The second comment pleased me far more than the first. I look young for my age thanks to good genetics, but my sortedness? That I had to work at.

[Max Torque]

The best compliment I've ever heard wasn't delivered to me personally. A little background:

In college, I turned my back on organized religion and became an atheist. A person on my floor learned about this, and asked me to meet with him and a friend to talk about religion and such. So, I did, with a friend of my own in tow (a non-atheist) just so I wouldn't get dog-piled. We talked about all sorts of things, never got hostile, but they didn't change my mind about anything.

After I left, my friend stayed behind for a bit. They still didn't understand how I could be an atheist, and asked my friend why I was like that. And what he told them was still the greatest compliment I've ever received: "Because he thinks." My friend may not have agreed with me on everything, but he did understand that I had thought deeply about the beliefs I held, and he respected that. I really appreciated that.

[silenus]

When students come back years later and tell me I made a difference in their lives, it always touches me. But to tell the truth, the one compliment that sticks more than any other was delivered by an ex-girlfriend who was dating my room-mate. She and he had been quite noisily copulating upstairs while I read a book in the living room. This auditory stimulus had me quite erect, and was distracting from my reading. Hollea came tripping downstairs to head home, and stopped by my chair to chat for a bit. I laid the book in my lap and tried not to show my reaction. We exchanged pleasantries, and then as she left she leaned over, grabbed my unit, gave it a squeeze and said "Don't worry. You're still the best fuck in the state." and headed out the door.

Sincere or not, that has been a pleasant memory to this day.

[MsFancyPlants]

I went to the beach for the weekend with my best friend's boyfriend. My best friend, Holly, couldn't go at the last minute because of a far away funeral she felt she must attend. Later another mutual friend commented to Holly that she must really trust her boyfriend since she wasn't worried about us going to the beach without her. Holly said she didn't trust her boyfriend at all but she completely trusted me.

[Nava]

You guys know those peeing contests guys have... like my brothers when they were little, going in the backseat of the car "so I grenade your soldiers!" "then I bazooka yours!" "then I use an A bomb!" "then I! use! an H bomb!"

One day I was in an internet game with two friends (Mike and Paul) and a friend of theirs (John). It was a text-based game and somehow during a break they managed to sort'a forget I was there and started a peeing contest about who could come up with the most absurd strategy, including proposals that involved things which the computer-controlled enemies were most definitely not equipped for. After a while I say "so, do we go in or what?" and they all go "oh my God, Nava is here! uhm..."
Me: Oh, well, you know, I was thinking (insert here an idea even more absurd than the ones they'd bandied about)
John: I don't know what you're smoking but I want some, what's it called?
Mike: nah man, Nava doesn't do drugs.
John: that sounded like she's pretty high. And anyway how do you know she doesn't do drugs, you just know she says she doesn't.
Mike: first, I know she doesn't because nobody who's on drugs has the kind of reflexes she has. And second, I know she's got crazier ideas sober than all of us high and putting our heads together. She just doesn't normally share them with strangers to avoid scaring them: count yourself privileged.
Paul: yup.

It's a totally weird compliment but well, I never claimed to be normal, I just sometimes kind'a fake it.

[CAT=^..^=]

My five year old son gives me lots of little compliments daily, which I love, but one that sticks out came from my great-nephew, Tyler.
It was 1990, and he was just about 3. I had spent the whole summer with him, playing and taking care of him. I was out of work for 3 months, and had a Nanny job in the fall that would take me 2000 miles away. He was so enamoured with me, that he would run and change his clothes to look like mine. Lucky for him I dressed mostly in jeans and t-shirts.

Anyway...I moved from Wisconsin to L.A. California to be a nanny that fall. I was so lonely for a few months. In one phone call a few weeks after my move, his mother told me that one night while out looking at the stars with the neighbors, the neighbor lady asked Tyler, "Who put those stars up there?". I am sure she thought he would say God, or Jesus, or something like that. Tyler said, "My Aunt Cathy put them up there for me"!

Wow!!
He is almost 21 now, and I made him a card for H.S. graduation about that incident. His mother told me he had that card on his nightstand for weeks, and read it a lot. Another compliment.

[Octalcode]

Two.

The most improtant was from my son speaking at his college graduation.
"I want to just thank my Dad for believing in me. I would not be up here without his support"

Arthur Kane and Johnny Thunders:
" Hey man, that was great. You got the gig. We want you to stay on with us."

[ExTank]

My former Boss (who is now our Regional Service Sales Rep). made copies of my filing system, and shows my paperwork around to our high-end ISO clients as an example of what we can do for them.

It's netted two former clients who had went with one of our competitors a few years back.

[TheMerchandise]

A friend of mine was describing me to someone I've never met: [TheMerchandise] just has a glow that attracts people to her.

I really appreciated that and try to be that person he described... and not the alienating bitch I feel like most days.

[Redwing]

In tech school, after completing a moderately difficult exersize and explaining it to his partner, one of the other airmen says "I feel like Redwing!"

At a lessons learned session a company or two ago: "What do you do if you can't get hold of anyone?" "Call Redwing. If he doesn't know, he knows who will, and they'll answer his call"

[chowder]

From my family doctor:

"You are the nicest person I've ever met, I doubt you've an enemy in the world"

Aw shucks doc