Being German alone makes you hate that English question.
Do you want to hear it or not?!
Don’t be surprised to get an answer!
This is how I feel. If you ask, I will tell you. If you don’t want to know, why did you ask?
Apparently I have the soul of a German.
Jetzt bist du einer von uns! 🤗
Fair
Well you lot are just as bad. What’s with Guten Tag? Good Day? Is it still the 1800s in Germany? We stopped using archaic language centuries ago.
I never considered guten Tag a question. It is more of a wish. Or do you consider good morning a question too?
(and regarding archaic… 200 years are nothing in human development 😁)
Thinking…
Thinking…
Thinking…
“Tired. How about you?”
I continue to do A. Helps me find other neurodivergent peeps and makes others uncomfortable. Sorts people out for me 🙂
I can’t help but to do A.
I’m in my late 30s, and only realized a couple years ago that option A wasn’t always the right answer.
There are 10,000 true things you could say. But you’re choosing the in-your-face truth to share. And that’s OK maybe, but don’t let your choice turn you into a jerk.
“Good thanks, you?”
Or, “been better, so hot today”.
you’re suppose to either say good or say bad with a witty (small talk) reason, that’s it.
Might be cultural, but I never get bad reactions to A. Nobody wants your life story, but if you’re brief, chances are nobody will bat an eye. e.g. ‘tired’, ‘stressed’.
It does work, but it’s harder to pull off because you need to give a short, relatable reason along with a negative (if not immediately obviously).
If you reply that you’re stressed but you leave it at that, the other person won’t know if they should ask you about it or not. If they do, they might be getting into a much harder, longer conversation than they were expecting to.
But if they don’t ask, then they will feel like they’re being rude, because you’re supposed to help out other people if they’re not well, so either way it probably won’t be a pleasant experience for them.If you offer something like “stressed, finals are coming up”, then they can keep the conversation going by asking you about it, or they can just move on by wishing you luck or something to that effect and move on.
Yep 100%. Culturally where I’m at small talk is seen as having the purpose of starting an actual conversation, so ‘stressed, finals are coming up’ is ideal. Brief, not too deep, and invitation for conversation. But also said in a way so that’s it’s not rude for them to just say ‘sorry, that sucks’ isn’t rude.
Good how about yourself
I almost always forget to reciprocate in person lol
Them: “How are you”
Me: “Good”
Them: “…”
Me: “…”
The doctor asked me this at my last visit. Before I could stop myself, I responded “You tell me”.
Why does talking about a special interest have to be a negative/panic response? I do this all the time and people seem interested. Or they suddenly have to go haha. Either way, you asked! Though these days, talking about machine learning is more socially acceptable than it used to be thanks to ChatGPT! A lot of opportunities to correct misinformation too, though people hate being wrong, so that needs some care…
Anyway, yeah, I take that as an invitation!
Agreed. Also, A and C assume things are bad which is a lame assumption. Sometimes things are going good specifically because of a special interest.
A while back, once I realized it’s a greeting not a question, I started answering with “so far so good”. It’s just as banal as “fine thanks” but it’s non standard and makes people laugh. To be clear, I didn’t intend it to be funny. Idk why people laugh, but I guess it’s because it breaks the script in a gentle way. I honestly started saying it as a compromise between “fine thanks” and a genuine answer.
If I’m screwing with people I’ll say “badly but I’m getting used to it”.
Exactly. So many people just don’t understand it. Nobody actually wants to know how your day’s going, it’s just a fancy “hello”. So I reply “hello” and have a little smile to myself while their face shows they’re processing the non-sequitur.
Protip: in small talk/office chitchat C is often functionally D.
C for me because if I want you to know how my day is going, I’ll let you know.
C because they apparently dont care how my day is and are just asking because that’s a thing people do for some reason.
Ask me a lie of a question, get a lie for an answer.
I’ve come to prefer the response “Good enough.”
I ignore the question and ask what they really want
I always go for D asap which ends up being C. I don’t want to have a superficial conversation with someone I may never see again. For some reason I am more commonly asked “Any plans for the weekend?” and I always just say “nope” which usually ends the conversation there. One time someone hit me with a “Any plans for the holiday?” which really threw me off because I didn’t have a canned response and I said “I’m picnicking” and I just felt so awkward and embarrassed that I froze and felt like covering my face.
My day moves endlessly forward through time, and there is nothing I can do to change its direction.
