I Am Not Your Friend

Is it just me or do you suffer the over familiarity of greetings too? Now on last viewing neither of my female dinner companions was or is indeed remotely butch and yet on waiting to be ushered to a place of eating we were greeted with a painfully artificial grin and a “Hi guys”. This is by no means the first time I have been welcomed (if that’s what you can call it), in this fashion. But it doesn’t end there. Every available blackboard special is prefixed with a “Right guys”, “Ok guys”, “Hey guys” or “It’s like this guys”. What bizarre school of etiquette have these waiters, waitresses or food fetching staff been passed through? And what’s the collective term for these overly friendly, false smiling, head leaning budgerigars any way?

I love my food, I’m a grazer and pick away happily all day long but these Food Utility Collecting Kitchen Staffers, as we shall call them, (I won’t abbreviate it), can destroy my appetite within the two seconds it takes to squeak, “Hi guys”. And why the need some thirty seconds after delivering their wares do they feel the need to ask “Is everything ok guys?”. One, I’ve not yet managed to taste a single morsel for which I might offer up a subjective response, and two, if there was a problem you would most certainly already know about it.

The final insult after a barrage of condescending comment and helium filled chirpiness is the presentation of the card reader. ‘Gratuity not included…’ Ten percent extra to carry my plate from the kitchen not more than twenty feet away? You bunch of Food Utility Collecting Kitchen Staffers.

It was with the same grumpy annoyance that I read a recently received text. The term that raised my already over-sensitive hackles this time was ‘mate’. ‘Cheers mate, OK mate, how are you mate? To me the placing of the word ‘mate’ at the end of a greeting or closing statement feels as though the perpetrator is really saying “We’re not… But could I be your friend?” But not a close friend… Only until I’ve got what I want from you… friend. I am not your mate. What do you want?

People struggle with the social etiquette of greetings and goodbyes in all walks of life but it seems even worse in the workplace. The simple handshake takes on such importance, you actually panic when you realise that the opposing hand is approaching with uncertainty and dithering. Should you take the lead? Reach out? Wait? Squeeze? And how long should you maintain the grip? And what if the opposing hand is limp? There is nothing worse than a limp hand and while you’ve worried yourself about this, that and maybes, the opposing hand has grasped you… by the fingers.

There is after all something worse than a limp handshake. It’s the missed grasp, the grip finger shake. The didn’t quite get it right shake. The woosie waft of a handshake. No matter how cool you may be, your street credibility is gone, jiggled away into embarrassed floppy oblivion.

But the horror of etiquette horrors is understanding just when is the appropriate point, if at all, to add a peck on the cheek to the by now familiar, well-rehearsed, confident handshake. Now get this wrong and it could be a whole lot worse than dented pride. It’s never good to head butt a client. Often though its possibly crossed your mind.