This is why I say “Hello” and not “How are you?”
Which unfortunately usually gets answered with: “Not bad. You?”
I disagree. For instance, if the OP shoots all these rude people in the kneecaps, he can change them from “mobile” to “immobile.” And maybe they’ll learn something about the consequences of rudeness too.
It’s obviously not something that I spend hours thinking about. It is however a minor annoyance. The examples I gave in my OP weren’t great to say the least.
Hahaha. I do the same thing. I even respond to “Hey, how are you?”, with “Hi” or “Hello”. And that always gets answered with “Good, thanks!” :dubious:
double post
I cannot comprehend such a world. It truly boggles my mind. :eek:
Across all societies and cultures, the rules of etiquette are arbitrary and capricious. People who follow them communicate to others, “Hey, I’m a decent fellow just like you” but on a baser level, they are communicating that they are conforming to the arbitrary and capricious rules of a specific culture in a specific time and place.
A person has a choice in how to interpret a breach of etiquette. They can interpret someone not saying “and you?” as an act of rudeness. Or they can interpret it as an act of non-conformity. The person may have forgotten to say “and you?” or they were not raised to say this.
You can’t help how you feel, but you can train yourself to think different thoughts and thereby influence the kinds of reactions you have.
Wait a minute: I have to respond to your meaningless chit-chat with more meaningless chit-chat, lest I be thought of as rude? No, just go ahead and think I’m rude, it’s a lot less hassle.
Maybe he’s just not that into you.
(bolding mine)
You keep repeating “even if you aren’t actually interested in how they are”, but if you don’t care how my children are, or what I did last night, do not ask me. I’ll sense you’re just pretending to care, and if you do it again I’ll write you off as an insincere weasel, and probably willing to ‘pretend’ (ie, basically lie) about other things as well.
Just reread this and I can see why you’d think I’m a jerk at work. No, I do ask about other people’s activities, trips, kids… but only when I actually care.
I take the time to listen to people’s family problems, and I know that little Scooter is a whiz on his rollerblades, so I ask if he’s tried that new skatepark on the west side, and hey, how’d his trip to Urgent Care yesterday turn out?
I’m pretty polite, but this is the one I struggle with. There are times I’m ambling along and someone, seeing me approaching, holds the door. Now I’ve got to speed up so as not to leave them standing there waiting, when I was perfectly fine with moving at my own pace and getting the door for myself.
Following the Golden Rule, if someone’s a ways back as I go thru (rather than just a pace or two behind), I head on my way rather than rush them. Half the time, though, I look back to see the door close on them, as they did speed up to try to catch it and now they’re glaring at me.
I see what you’re saying. I’m not sure why I agreed with that statement or said it myself in the OP, the people I would normally ask this question to and expect a response from would be family, friends or colleagues in most cases. I would therefore have an interest in what they had to say.
I’m not sure that viewing someone at an acquaintance level or less as an “insincere weasel” for being polite as they passed you at the water cooler is particularly fair, but there we go.
The examples I’ve given in this thread don’t amount to much on their own and a lot of the time aren’t given a second thought, but I think the point I’m trying to get across (probably quite badly), is that common courtesy goes a long way. It’s often forgotten in the workplace, and coupled with stress, little things can be magnified to seem impolite.
You, my, friend, would probably not fare very well in a wheelchair then. Seriously, this kinda shit never ends. I can be getting out of my car in the parking lot-a good hundred yards from the door to the building I am planning on entering-and some good Samaritan who is either coming in or going out of that door and happens to see me and my wheelchair in the vicinity will stand there holding the door with a big smile, saying “Coming in?”
Now I can either lie and say no, that I was going somewhere else or I can accept this offer and then feel like a spotlight is on me the entire time I traverse the length of the parking lot to get to the door that is being held for me. I fucking hate it. I feel obligated to move faster than I would normally move, on account of there being some person standing there waiting for me to get to the door that they are holding for me. Saying “no thank you” simply doesn’t work. EVER. They just ignore me, hand waving away my polite declines as if I only said no thanks because I didn’t want to trouble them.
Rules of etiquette provide guidelines for interacting with strangers and acquaintances, primarily. Strangers and acquaintances don’t know if we are douchebags or non-douchebags. Etiquette provides a quick and easy way to distinguish the two.
Friends and family, however, already know us. And you should already know them. They aren’t supposed to be polite to you because politeness is a formality. You should be able to relax around your famil0iars and not hold them to high standards of etiquette.
If your friend doesn’t ask how your day went after he just talked your ear off, that’s straight-up is rude. But you shouldn’t need him to say “and you?” for you to feel comfortable opening up to him. That’s what friends are for.
That’s Mr. Asshole to you!
Yeah, that’s the kind of thing I thought this would be about - people who line-jump the queue of people waiting in traffic and then some do-gooder always lets them in, that kind of thing.
I do it a little differently. Friend asks me, “How ya doin’?” and I say “Fine.”
The next time I meet him, I get the question. “How ya doin’?” And he says “Fine.”
Streamline the ritual.
I disagree with this. Etiquette is society’s friction reducer and there are few greater sources of friction than family interaction - they deserve more politeness, not less. It’s weird how few people agree when you consider that the people most likely to murder you are those closest to you; and most of the smoldering resentments that lead to such things could be prevented with the same niceties we extend to total strangers every day.
Or - a couple hundred people exiting the train station - common courtesy is that as each person in the crowd passes through the door they give a push to keep it open for the next person. Now, with cell phones, you get the assholes who have their heads down and two hands on the phone - so they sail through so the door closes on you.
The how was your day? small talk doesn’t register for me as I see it as meaningless. If me or my friend really care we will make it known and we’ll have a real discussion.
There’s a difference between being “nice” and being “kind”. You can be both, of course. But I dunno. One seems to be more important than the other when were’ talking about friends, IMHO.
The things I consider especially kind–giving someone a gift, showing fondness and affection, telling a person “I love you”, being a good listener–are things I wouldn’t think of doing for strangers. And I wouldn’t want strangers doing them to me. I try to be “nice” towards strangers, as the rules of etiquette dictate. But kindness doesn’t operate on rules, at least not capricious ones. A person who doesn’t say “and you?” isn’t an unkind person. They are just a person who didn’t say “and you?” when you expected them to.
If a friend showed me they cared nine times out of ten, I wouldn’t even notice the single time they forgot to say “and you?” Indeed, if a friend held this faux pas against me while overlooking all the times that I was kind to them, I wouldn’t really think of them as my friend anymore. I’d bump them down to “acquaintance” and save my kindness (as opposed to “niceness”) for someone who appreciates such things.