So last night I’m at an opening party at a gallery in the midst of a deserted industrial section of town. Not the sort of thing I normally do, but a friend of mine didn’t want to go alone and asked me to accompany her. She’s chatting with a bunch of the other very, very stylish people who are there while I drink my coffee and look at the stuff on the walls. Toward the end of the evening she introduces me to a bunch of the hipster chicks she was talking with, so I nod and smile and whatnot. One of the hipster chicks is there with a hipster guy–all black clothes, big stainless piercings, tight cap, et cetera–who smiles, says “hey”, and holds out his hand. So I say “hey” and give him a good handshake and he screams and collapses.
I dunno. You may actually have established alpha male status, unless you were dressed too stylishly and opened your mouth too much, in which case I wouldn’t worry about it.
Afterwards, he just kept muttering “Ow! Jesus!” and massaging his hand while looking at me reproachfully. I muttered an apology and wandered off in search of a drink.
I’d spent the previous week having a bunch of meetings with executives and high-level sales guys from a number of large companies, so maybe my handshake-heartiness scale ended up recalibrated higher than usual. I dunno.
So yeah, he basically upbraided you for your manly handshake. He’s sensitive, man. He’s comfortable with his feminine side. He wonders what you have to prove.
…I mean, jeez, gimme some credit for having manners. Plus, I see no real point to those dominance games in the first place. And anyway, I’ll readily admit to being a total wimp. There’s a reason why I’m confused about apparently hurting the guy.
I gota say, though, that the dude is a royal wuss. Anyone who has learned how to shake hands can adjust thier grip to avoid hand-crushing by even the biggest men giving a firm handshake. Now, if you were going all hulk on him for fun, then yes, you probably broke him. Otherwise, if you normally deliver handshakes and people don’t fall on the ground (or refuse to shake your hand anymore…do you get a lot of hugs instead of handshakes at meetings?), then I’d say you just ran into an attention whore, or someone with a sore hand who shouldn’t have been shaking hands in the first place.