The motivation to be polite is irrelevant. The motivation of Nice Guys© is to be overly polite and you can see what the consensus around these parts have to say about that. It is the same thing (even though in your born and bred (heh) culture it is normal, it’s passive/aggresive). It is the persistant insistence of it that I find disgusting, and if one declines after 3 times, you’re labeled a “picky eater”, along with being guilted into hearing stories of some potatoe famnine, and how lucky you should be to have been offered food.
The motivation to be polite is NEVER irrelevant, it’s social lubrication. The aim to be polite (from MOST people in most cultures) is what makes society work. “Polite” is a socialy/culturaly agreed on set of rules thats keeps the wheel that is society lubricated…
In recent years in some societies those rules have become replaced with ‘ME’. when ‘ME’ becomes more important then ‘US’ then it is all downhill. When someone decides that their RIGHT to decide what they eat, when they eat and how much they eat is more important then a societies collective “agreement” then everything turns to custard.
Sure we all have the right to hate eating liver but when liver is the thing everyone else in a society eats proclaiming it as gross is just wrong.
When someone continues to offer food and you just ain’t hungry you accept a wee something and make it last forever…unless you want to be rude or think that you are more important then your host…if that’s the case just stay home.
I’ve lived in Minnesota my entire life, and I disagree. The fact that many people do not consider it rude does not mean it is not, in fact, rude. Of course, my breeding may be suspect.
I ask in all honesty - what’s the tie-breaker between cultures? Which gets to kow-tow and which gets kow-towed-to? Do only politically defined entities such as states and nations get to have cultures that count, or do geographically disperse things such as hippie-ism and Internet geekery count as culture? Suppose a culture holds the value that cultural relativism is silly - what then? How many people are required to make a culture that counts?
Personally, I think the idea that someone saying “no” means “no” is a pretty good ideal for any culture to hold, and any culture which generally ignores this rule is flawed to that extent.
By definition, being rude is being discourteous or impolite. So because its a negative, you need to establish what polite is. In a society where offering food three times is considered polite, it is not being rude to offer it three times. Annoying, sure. But not rude by definition - unless you disagree that the three times rule exists here (and it doesn’t sound like you do).
What is the tie breaker between cultures, normally the predominate culture wins - you don’t take rave manners to the church chicken dinner, you don’t take your big Italian family manners into your husband’s WASPY family. A potluck is a different event than a black tie charity dinner. But most importantly, you don’t go LOOKING for slights when it can be simply explained by a different cultural context. If someone else brings their potluck manners to a formal dinner, you assume that is what they know - not that they are purposely using the wrong fork just to piss you off.
The point your raising is not what is on debate here, though. It is quite clear from the OP that the jsgoddess lives in a Western/European environment/culture where the onus is still on the host to look after the guest, not the other way around.
I agree that when in Rome, do as the Romans do, but I didn’t think this applied here.
Oh, and house manners tend to rule. If you are in a shoes off at the door house, you take your shoes off at the door - even if they are $400 shoes that make the outfit. If you are at a shoes on home, you leave your shoes on, even if you would be much more comfortable running around in socks. (It is only fair to know if you are going into a shoes on/off home, or an eat before you arrive/plan on having six courses pushed your direction home before you show up - but it isn’t always possible). You can then decide if you want to continue visiting, but you don’t get to apply your standards of etiquette to the host.
Well, see, I disagree with that as well. The host have a job to look after the guest, but the guest has a job to be a good guest. As I said earlier, a hosts responsibility to make the guest feel comfortable does not mean a guest gets to walk in, plop down on the couch, throw their feet up on the coffee table and yell “get me a beer, woman.”
I agree. However, let’s not get into the shoes on-or-off thing again, for the love of Pete.
Perhaps, because you can find just about anything you want in California, and there will be a society to promote whatever it is somewhere. Maybe ice skating in Arizona would’ve been better. (In fact, isn’t there an ice rink in a shopping mall down there in San Diego?)
I eventually figured this out after saying “yes” the first time a couple times. Then, when I wasn’t actually hungry, I said, “no,” twice, and accepted at last, because I thought it’d never stop.
But even if I absolutely didn’t want to eat, I don’t see what’s so hard about saying, “No thank you” a third time. I just don’t see how offering something could be “rude.” Maybe it’s annoying, but I don’t think rude. Even if someone kept offering me food over and over again dozens of times, I’d just chalk it up to crazy.
hehe, no, of course a guest has to display good behaviour. But my initial post was a disagreement with a statement that “you should accept the offer of a drink/food to make the host feel that they’ve done a good job”.
If, as a guest, you feel you have to accept drink/food after (politely) refusing the offer multiple times in order to make the host feel they’ve done a good job, then the host hasn’t done a good job as he/she has ignored your needs. Specifically on this issue, I think it is the host who should be aware of the guests’ needs, not vice versa
FTR, most of my family lives in Minnesota so I’m well-versed in the Minnesota Goodbye–and my gaming group does it every single time. During the summer, we would actually do the Minnesota Goodbye outside. With the host. That’s how bad it was.
There is, but I’m pretty sure that a minority of San Diegans have ever been there or consider it a fun place to hang out. (It’s in an upper-middle-class, soccer-mom type of area, and for the most part the only people who go there are soccer moms and their kids. I have played broomball there a couple of times, though, and it’s good fun.)
Anyway, you could spend time with me and my friends for years and the idea of going ice skating would never come up. Not once. I think that’s probably the case in most of California, especially considering that once you get outside of the major urban areas there’s probably very little ice.
FTR, what I meant by “I wouldn’t know” is that I wouldn’t know whether or not ice skating is popular throughout most of the US.
“Would you like some-a zucchini
Or-a my homemade linguini, it’s hard to beat
Have-a more fettuccini.
Ay, you getting too skinny, you gotta to eat
Ay, mange, mange”
– Lasagna by ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic
But don’t tell me that you don’t know that there’s the nasty, passive-aggressive side to “Minnesota Nice” - I only lived there a few years and I even figured that out.
Wait, what? Why stop? You could’ve trained her. Instead, she whipped you. Maybe it was worth it but still.
Sure, but I don’ think that’s what the Lutheran church ladies are up to with the three times rule. Why assume it is?
It seems clear that the Western/European culture is not as cut and dried as you believe, unless Minessota doesn't count? How about Greek, Italian, Irish? Are you just talking about your own particular "Western/European" self?
As a guest surely (in whatever culture) it is your responsibilty to respect your host. I f they want to feed you CHEW SLOWLY!Between hexmas and new year, we’ll go up to Scotland to visit ‘im indoors’ parents. As soon as we get to the house, his mother will ask us what we want. I’ll settle for a cup of tea (as will he), then we get the offer of cakes, biscuits, pastries etc right up to sandwiches and a full meal.
Having turned down all of those offers, she’ll make us a drink and without fail will present it to us along with a plate of assorted cakes. Bless 'er, she means well.
His younger sister is pretty much the same although she’s more the type to disregard it when I say “thanks, Tracy, but I don’t really want vodka at ten in the morning!”
Okay I do understand where you are coming from. But let’s say I just moved to this ‘three times rule land’ and I, in my particular culture don’t have that rule. So I invite these Lutheran church ladies to my house–I offer them something, they decline and that is the end of it. That is how it is my culture–you ask they either accept or decline.
Do these Lutheran church ladies now consider me a rude host since I only offered them the one time? Am I rude? Does my knowledge or ignorance of ‘their culture’ excuse my behavior?
“I’m sorry, I have a medical condition and my diet is being supervised by my doctor. I’m not allowed to eat anything unless it comes from a specifically prescribed set of special meals. If I eat normal food, it’ll tear out my stomach lining and then I’ll puke up a bunch of blood and die. So no thanks.”