2011-06-26 - Manners

Thank you for reading this post about manners. How did that make you feel? Do you feel warm and fuzzy and a part of something? If so, why do you think I’m an arse? I mean I shouldn’t have to say “thank you”, it should be implied. You should just generally assume that I am thankful to you for reading the gibberish I put on the internet. It would be really silly of me to write stuff and post it publicly if I didn’t want people to read it. It would also be silly for you to be reading my stuff if you didn’t at least sort of like me. Now “Please” is even worse than “thank you”. Did you know that “please” has no actual meaning? It is simply a modifier to make the request polite. Why can’t we just assume people are making a polite request? If they weren’t making a polite request they’d probably sound a lot more forceful and demanding and such. They’d say something like “GIVE ME SOME BLOODY FECKING MILK OR I’LL CHOP YOUR DAMN HEAD OFF”. In some cases saying “Please” and “thank you” isn’t even a good way to show gratitude. If someone buys you a boat saying “thank you” hardly covers the size of the matter in question. Freaking out and jumping around and being completely speechless would actually say more than these so called manners.

What about “You’re welcome”, it has no meaning either. It is simply the ritual reply to “thank you”. In fact it actually sounds rather impolite. It sounds to me less of an acknowledgment of gratitude and more of a command. YOU are welcome and you don’t have a choice in the matter. Welcome in other contexts usually means some sort of occurrence is acceptable to continue. You are welcome to come in; you are welcome to give your opinion. These sentences serve as a kind of approval of the course of action that another person seems to be going down. If you apply this idea to the “thank you” response it sounds like that person is welcome to continue praising you. It sounds very narcissistic in that context, like “Yes, I welcome your gratitude”. Now you could always use the more humble “No problem”, or “It was nothing” replies but apparently some people get offended by those. You just did something for them and they are offended at how you replied to their thanks? They’re the ones without manners.

Now that’s not to say you should never use “please” and “thank you”. I use them quite regularly with people I don’t know. If I’m going out for supper I will say “please” when I ask for something of the waiter and “thank you” when they provide it. They don’t know me and therefore I have to make it apparent that I am grateful and polite through my speech. If you don’t know the person you can’t really make assumptions about them and so they are required to state clearly their politeness or non-politeness. This makes sense and is the only context where people should use manners. Should they be forced to use manners in these situations? Hell no, if you don’t use manners on your own accord to show you are polite then you aren’t and you shouldn’t lie to people. After you get to know someone a bit you can start slowly lowering your use of polite modifiers until they are completely gone and it is simply implied.

In closing, forcing people to use manners is very rude.