juniperluann:

weasowl:

sea-anon:

deanismymom:

sea-anon:

krystalprism:

sea-anon:

deadmomjokes:

beetledrink:

i love it when you accidentally meet eyes with a stranger in public and you flash a quick polite smile and they look at you like they wish you were dead in a ditch

I’ve seen this several times on my dash and always with southerners being confused in the tags why the rest of the US is like this, and as a southerner, I have to say, SAME. Like, there’s plenty to hate about the south, don’t get me wrong, but at least in general we have public courtesy down to a science. I ordered at a Sonic out West once and the guy specifically had someone take over his headset so he could come out and shake my hand because he was from Tennessee and it was the first time since he moved West that he heard anyone say “Yes sir.” And it’s just…. Automatic for me? And this polite smile thing, people will jump and glare and I’m just trying to be friendly not awkward? What else is a socially anxious southern child to do upon accidentally making eye contact? Look down and hurry away? Isn’t that rude??? Someone explain why is smiling met with such anger I am confused and afraid.

Exactly!! When I moved to Missouri I was baffled at how rude everyone is! Like I saw someone I knew at Walmart and stopped to chat and they didn’t even stop! They just went ‘hi’ and moved on. Like????

And when I moved here I made cookies for the neighborhood, cuz that’s what you do and the first place I went they said “we don’t eat things with sugar” and shut the door.

Like why do y’all hate everyone so much?

I’m Canadian and am also confused

Well yeah everyone knows Canadians are the friendliest people in the world

I’m from Indiana and I’m pretty sure if you don’t talk to someone you know In Wal-Mart for at least 5 minutes you go to jail

No but that would still be rude in kentucky

You are expected to talk for at least 15 minutes, say goodbye (like, a “take care y’all, tell me how that knee is doin”) and then you talk for another ten minutes, move a little further apart and say goodbye again (“well I better get going tell your nana I said hi”) and then you talk for a while and say goodbye one more time (“I’ll see y’all at church on Sunday/school/Jo-mart/Nana’s funeral”) and move on to the next person

And don’t even get me started on food etiquette

It’s not a south v. west thing, it’s a city thing. That’s why New Yorkers are the purest version of this. And it’s why I get both sides.

I grew up in a small town in Northern California, and it was proud of all the small town things – “you can leave your door unlocked” and all that. I got a job for a while as a bank teller, and this coworker of mine had moved there from New York.

I liked him (I tend to get along with folks) but a lot of people thought he was rude. “short” “impatient” even “brusk” were some descriptions of him, not just from our coworkers, but from the bank customers too. They complained because he always rushed them, never wanted to make small talk, etc.

One day I was working next to him, and I heard him verbally pushing yet another customer along, just racing him through the transaction against his will, and I thought, I’m gonna say something to him about it.

As soon as the customer left though, before I could say anything, my coworker goes “damn I hate people like that, get to  the front of the line and want to tell me their whole life story. So RUDE!”

So I say something like, how is he the one that was rude to you?

And goes, like he can’t believe how stupid I’m being, “ not to me, to all those people in line behind him that want to finish up here and get on with the rest of their day! You’re at the bank, you know why you’re here, you step up, you do a polite greeting and get the fuck down to business. Everybody has shit to do, and they can’t do it until you shut up about your life story that zero people drove down here to listen to. It’s so selfish! I can’t stand people like that”
 
Since then, I’ve lived in San Francisco, and L.A., and Montgomery Alabama, and Germany and Portland and Oakland and a bunch of little ass towns like Suisun Ca, and Kenwood and all kinds of places, Santa Cruz and Rohnert Park. And I’ve thought about the thing that guy started me noticing.

It’s true. The closer in to a city (and the larger the city) the more the concept of polite changes from “how you are effecting the person you are communicating with” to “how you are effecting the people packed in around you”

In Oakland there are like, zero grocery stores (Oakland is literally documented as a “food desert”) and so the best grocery store in Berkeley is also a favorite grocery store of Oakland residents and it is… full.

You’ll spend a full 30 minutes in the snake of cars circling around in the parking lot waiting for somebody to finish shopping and leave so a parking spot opens up. Once inside, it’s more of the same. Shopping carts are cart-front to ass cheek. You literally can’t reach onto a shelf for a box of cereal without waiting for somebody to give you a break in traffic. Sometimes you get stuck standing in a single spot for several minutes, boxed in on all sides.  I’ve only been twice, and I swear to all holy gods that if I saw two people trying to catch up on chit chat while we all tried to maneuver around them, I would been reaching for my murdering stick. It’s called skype motherfuckers, go the fuck home and talk to each other, jfc, the rest of us are trying to make a deadline for some other shit we gotta get done today.

Now, going back home, to small town Nor Cal, yeah, I don’t want to be rude, I’m gonna stop and say hi, I’m gonna ask about your family, I’m gonna rack my brain and remember that you had a sick cat or a trip you were trying to take or an interest in boats, and I’m gonna ask about that shit, fuck yeah tell me about how the tomatoes are coming in this year, I hear the birds are worse than ever.


Anyway, city folk ain’t rude, they just polite different; suitable for city life.

This is such a great explanation, and really important.

This was a perfect explanation of something that I struggled to explain when I lived in Tennessee and Oklahoma, a born and raised New Englander who has also lived in New York.

To me, it’s not even just the people around, it’s also the other person. Why am I going to be selfish and demand that someone stop their entire lives to chit-chat with me? If they’re working, they’re fucking working and they’re only being polite because they HAVE TO BE, get down to business and move along. That, to me (and the culture I grew up with) is polite; talking about yourself or demanding that they discuss their business in public is rude as fuck. And if I see someone in public, they probably have other shit to do after they finish getting their groceries or whatever, and hell, so do I. Say hello, be polite, walk the fuck away.

It really is a matter of perception. Where I work, nearer a city now, most of my coworkers don’t loiter to talk. The ones who do are often transplants or from very rural surrounding towns; a fellow New Englander is even more in a hurry than I am, and likes people best when they don’t waste his time, as he’s a manager with a lot to do and a lot of people waiting on him to get through whatever comes before them.

The best way I ever managed to explain it to a coworker in Tennessee is this: In the South, it’s considered polite to spend your time on others. In the North, it’s polite not to waste theirs.

I also found that people who find it rude if you don’t stop to talk, also see social interactions as being about what they are giving of themselves to others (socialising in media res = GIVING your time TO others), whereas people like myself, who find it rude if you talk more than in passing, see social interactions as being about what you are asking others to give to you, and whether or not that is fair to do (socialising in media res = TAKING that time/energy FROM others).