I get a lot of my shirts from Threadless.com and I get a lot of compliments. I usually say thank you and mention the site. Either that, or I make a joke about the shirt or say what I like about it. You don’t have to go “on and on”-- just a line or two after “Thanks!” does just fine.
The compliments that I have the hardest time responding to are the ones which feel undeserved because the person offering the compliment is more enthusiastic than knowledgable.
For example: I play handbells in a church bell choir. On Christmas Eve we played a very complicated version of a popular Christmas carol. It was fun, but far from flawless. Friends told me how much they enjoyed it, (thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed it, we had fun playing it are all appropriate here) but they also said that we didn’t make any mistakes.
Now that’s just flat out not true–I can’t tell you for sure at this point what mistakes other people made, but I know darn well I made several. But they weren’t in the melody line, the arrangement was kinda busy, and I don’t know that any of the mistakes I made were obvious. Still, it’s just not true that we were flawless, and there is a strong temptation to point out the problems that the audience didn’t hear rather than bask in the glow of accomplishment.
Or, even more recently, take cooking or baking. I made a “fruit bread” (like banana bread, only with no bananas) for a pot luck. It was a failure. I didn’t bake my loaves long enough, so the middle didn’t set. I didn’t cook the glaze long enough (and didn’t add enough orange juice) so the sugar never completely dissolved. I waited too long to put the glaze on the bread, and failed to poke enough holes in the bread, so the glaze cooled on top of the bread into a crunchy topping rather than running down inside the loaf to be a nice moist flavor-adder. I made all these mistakes because I haven’t made this recipe before–and haven’t even eaten it in years.
But they weren’t obvious to other people–I was smart enough to slice up my loaves at home, and only take in the slices that were cooked through, and the glaze being wrong would only be obvious if you’d eaten it recently.
So I smiled, and said thank you, and I’m glad you/he enjoyed it, and carefully did not offer the recipe to anyone, and just laughed inwardly at the person who said I must have a knack for baking–because surely someone with a knack wouldn’t have made the mistakes I made–and made a note to contribute the story to this thread.
To kid around with friends and family I have started using the following response to sound like an obnoxious self-centered teen girl (even though I’m a 38yo male):
“Those shoes ae really cool.”
“I know, right.”
“Your son is really cute.”
“I know, right.”
“I like your furniture.”
“I know, right.”
May I suggest “It is my privilege,” if you think you can bring it off with a smile and sincerity. If you don’t really feel that way, it won’t work. But it is a soldierly kind of thing to say.
A thank you seems plenty.
I remember at my 10 year class reunion I paused to tell one woman that she had grown into a beauty. He simple and elegant thank you still lives in my memory.