On Monday, Bill Gates met with the new president of South Korea and shook her hand with his left hand in his pocket. This offended Koreans, because it is considered rude, and suggests that one is expressing superiority.
Apparently the proper thing is to use both hands when shaking.
I’ve known people who do this. Sometimes it’s a power play, sometimes it’s because the person can’t be bothered to give enough of a damn to give a good handshake, and sometimes it’s a missed target.
A really good handshake isn’t hard, but it does require that both parties do it right - you have to work with the other person a little bit to make sure everything slides well into place. Either person can fuck it up very easily.
When some dude I’ve never met gives me a weakass handshake, part of me wonders why he fucked it up. Ignorance? Distraction? Dominance issues? Either way, it’s going to factor into my initial opinion of him.
What’s the matter? They got you pushing too many pencils?
To compound the Missed Target Theory[sup]TM[/sup], the most common cause is the Make Solid Eye-Contact maxim dictated by the handbook for the truly manly. When you’re busy showing the other guy that you can look a peer in the eye, while repeating his name back to him so you don’t forget it, sometimes the clasp goes sideways.
I hate it when that happens.
Spot on.
What, they’ve told you explicitly that they do this, and that this is the message they’re trying to send when they do it?
If so, you should tell them that it’s not at all a universally understood gesture.
Or are you just making assumptions here?
I would assume someone just messed up, or was a bit gun-shy. I certainly wouldn’t interpret that as a power play so I’m unsure what the husband was sensing. But it’s not a common way to signal anything.
But I still see no point or motive to pull that type of maneuver on the spouse of an employee that you just met. Alpha male to what? They’re not in the same work or social environment. It’s implausible on the face of it. Perhaps the guy is a dick, but if so he’s not very clear about it.
Obviously it’s the alpha male challenging the other male for the desirable mate. The boss wants the employee to be his mate, so he humiliates her husband in front of her. This will demonstrate to her that she has chosen a weak mate and that the boss will be better able to provide for her and her children. It’s the classic law of the jungle. One male must defeat the other to take the best female.
So would you smack the guy with your limp white glove, then cooly twirl your mustache-end?
I imagine that going all alpha male with your handshakes has the potential to backfire. Not only can you come off as a dick, you can come off as petty and insecure. “Really, dude? You’re turning a handshake into some sort of frat-boy type dominance contest? You think that’s the key to earning respect?”
If someone shook my hand like that, I wouldn’t think twice about it. It’s just a handshake. I don’t see how one can take a handshake as an insult.
This is like that King of the Hill episode where Hank meets president Bush and he gives him a really bad handshake, which I think might end up affecting the way he voted in the 2004 re-election.
I laughed and was like, “I wonder if anyone really takes handshakes that seriously?”
Well, now I know! Handshaking is SERIOUS business! Evidently a handshake can imply all sorts of things I never knew.
I have never thought of a handshake as anything more than a societal obligation that meant literally nothing.
You’ve apparently missed some excellent threads on this board.
Got pinched in the handshake the other day by a real-estate agent. (Not squeezed, it was a pinch).
It made me angry because it is a dirty secret of sales: salesmen do it so that you will remember them. You aren’t supposed to realize that it is deliberate.
So count me as one who can be offended by a handshake.
Bump fists and avoid the drama.
He may have been “asking” your husband something which your husband didn’t know the answer to.
But what if I do the explode and you don’t? Then what man, then what?
Well, there’s that. But really, I fist bump in 90% of my handshake situations. People are usually a bit puzzled, not knowing if I’m being ironic or what. But most play along.
Sometimes people do this when they don’t want their hands squeezed in a “normal” handshake, either because they have sensitive hands or just because they don’t like it. Or maybe he just missed.
Regards,
Shodan
I do wonder if there is an intrinsic primal element to it all.
I was at a bar one afternoon. A dude walks in, he’s covered head to toe in tattoos. I find out later he’s an ex-con. An unreformed ex-con at that. This guy was abrasive in every way, shape and form. A true lowlife. That said, he was a total alpha.
A mutual friend went to introduce us. We shook hands. We both landed right on target giving each other a firm handshake. What he DIDN’T like was my eyes. I’ve got such poor motor skills my eyes tend to focus on the hands when I shake. (To make sure I hit my target.)
As we were shaking hands he tells me: “Look me in the eye! Look me in the eye!” I did of course. After that he seemed to think I was alright and accepted me as one of his own. (Not that I really gave a shit.)
It’s funny though, every since that exchange, I’ve made a conscious effort to look people in the eye when I’m shaking hands with them. It never occurred to me that this might be something people take offense to. Of course most people wouldn’t say anything because most people aren’t asshole knuckle draggers as the guy previously mentioned.