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my lack of social grace

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FishStickNick
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09 Jan 2014, 10:05 pm

Trontine wrote:
I learned in English class, while in high school, that it's impolite to elaborate, or even say "not good". You're supposed to answer "I'm fine" or something synonymous, and return the question. Which makes the question meaningless. I've also been told that this is how they greet each other in England.

How is it impolite, I wonder? Is admitting you're not in a great mood really going to offend someone's sensibilities? That makes little sense.



Trontine
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09 Jan 2014, 10:10 pm

FishStickNick wrote:
Trontine wrote:
I learned in English class, while in high school, that it's impolite to elaborate, or even say "not good". You're supposed to answer "I'm fine" or something synonymous, and return the question. Which makes the question meaningless. I've also been told that this is how they greet each other in England.

How is it impolite, I wonder? Is admitting you're not in a great mood really going to offend someone's sensibilities? That makes little sense.


Apparently because it's just a rhetorical question asked to be polite, although I don't see the politeness in it if you aren't supposed to answer it honestly. If they don't want the truth, they don't really care, do they? Thus they shouldn't ask in the first place.



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10 Jan 2014, 12:19 am

Trontine wrote:
I learned in English class, while in high school, that it's impolite to elaborate, or even say "not good". You're supposed to answer "I'm fine" or something synonymous, and return the question. Which makes the question meaningless. I've also been told that this is how they greet each other in England.


Yes it is, I get asked if I'm alright about 100 times a day, and that's off just one person.

I feel like saying: "Of course I'm f*****g OK, you only asked me 5 minutes ago".


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10 Jan 2014, 6:19 am

My boss at my new job will sometimes ask me "hows work going" or something like that. For those types of questions I am unable to give anything but a slightly hesitating boring reply like "yeah.. its good". Probably to lighten the exchange up a bit, my boss will then break in and say something obviously exaggerated like "amazing you're supposed to say!" to which we'll both smile. I usually appreciate when someone at least attempts to engage me like that though instead of just ignoring me like I don't even exist (at least if I can get away with the minimum of social chitchat.)

Are you really supposed to ask you're boss "how are you" or similar back though? My natural instinct is that if I was asked something like "how are you" I would actually be more polite if I only replied "I'm good" and din't ask it back, which would let him know that social chitchat is not needed for my wellbeing and he could continue with something else instead. Also I have a lot of inferiority feelings in social settings in general (although I've learned to cope fairly well now), and while I can see why someone would ask me something like that since I've been so poorly off in my life, asking it back to relatively normal well-functioning people would just feel really awkward to me. Also why would I in the first place want to answer someone a question when I know they're socially obliged to answer "I'm fine thanks" anyway?