Someone comes to you and says they’ve got something to tell you, please sit down - do you? It’s a tv trope (most recently seen on 24) that people get belligerent and demand the information - then get whoozy, faint, etc. I’ve never gotten that. Then again, the Browns are lousy with bad news - when someone calls, it’s the opener. “Hello?” “Your uncle died.” “And this is…?”
Personally, I’d siddown just to avoid a whole argument about how I really need to sit down…
I think it depends. I understand the trope, but in real life, when someone asks you to sit, it is because what they intend to tell you is going to take a while, so there’s no use just standing.
I’d sit just to avoid an argument as well, but I wouldn’t really see the point.
Unless the bad news is “I just started a fire in the kitchen” there’s really no reason not to sit for it. I can’t see myself possibly fainting or doing anything else that would make sitting necessary, though.
Personally, I think asking someone to sit is a euphemistic way to tell them just how bad the bad news is. You don’t want to them to think maybe this is a joke, that the bad news is that you’re out of dinner rolls, or just start by blurting out that someone just died. The person asking you to sit down probably doesn’t mean it literally.
I’d sit down just to get them to give me the bad news without an argument, but I’m kind of hard-pressed to think of what kind of news they could give me that might cause me to faint. I’d hate to think that that kind of news is out there, but you never know.
My natural reaction to bad news is to get all agitated, and start pacing about, so sitting down is kind of pointless. In fact, if someone told me something awful has happened that I should sit down for, I think my body would actively resist sitting down. So no.
I am susceptible to faintness when presented with extraordinarily bad news. Sitting down is just good sense for people like me.
ETA: slightly hijack, but it seems like a good way to prepare someone for bad news. It’s advertising: “I’m about to give you bad news.”
Is that the right thing to do? I once had to tell someone that a relative of theirs had died. I prefaced it: “Okay, I need to tell you some bad news.” They were mad at me, and said I shouldn’t “tease” like that, but just blurt it right out. “Your Uncle Joe is dead.” To me, that’s too blunt, too coarse. A bit of warning is better.
I’ve seen it used in the opposite way: saying “sit down” as a preamble to something that’s supposed to be mind-blowingly awesome.
I used to have a friend (one of those people who is constantly coming up with various schemes and “big ideas” that never panned out) who would start his phone calls to me with “Are you sitting down?” Then he’d launch into his latest brilliant idea, which would always turn out to be decidedly non-brilliant.
As for using “sit down” before delivering bad news, it sounds silly and euphemistic in the abstract, but sometimes it’s helpful. I remember hearing about a friend’s sudden, unexpected death while I was standing by a water cooler, and I nearly fell over.