Ooh, that one gets me. My first thought is always “well, as newly elected Smartest Man In The Universe, I assure you, you could be dumber.” It’s like, they’ve just established you as being some higher thinking individual, and anything you say nice to them will be from that post.
I don’t hate being wrongly complimented, but it does make me wonder about the sincerity of the speaker, and I may well be less likely to appreciate future compliments from them if I think they don’t mean it.
Uhm, SiL had spent many months of her life and lots of money straightening her naturally-wavy hair before someone complimented her on the waves one day she hadn’t had time to “do it.”
She came home for lunch, spent about half an hour ranting on that idiot, then we told her we actually thought it DID look nice with the natural wave and you know, there’s lots of people who spend lots of money adding a wave to their flat hair and maybe you should stop fighting your genes?
She’s had wavy hair since. And now with a toddler, she claims she’s oh-so-happy she’s not trying to have straight hair any more!
I do hate being told I’ve lost weight when I know I haven’t, but this mostly comes from the mothers of my ex-classmates: apparently, as their daughters get fatter… I get thinner by comparison :smack:
And being complimented on monkeywork feels almost as ridiculous as being berated for something that it would have taken the complainer less than a minute to fix. But I learned a long time ago that different people find different things difficult: I currently have a monkeytask which takes me about ten minutes each time, but others - over one hour! So to me it’s a monkeytask but to them it’s a huge timesaver.
Heh. One time one of my housemates said to me “You’re very beautiful in the face.” I’m sure that’s not true anyway (although I was young and better-looking then), but I read the compliment as “Your body needs help” and that’s how I responded.
I agree with the one about how great I am at my job. Any doofus could do this job; I try to be responsible and do a good job but that’s my duty. No need to compliment it.