No matter how bad my mood is, I always say, “Good morning” to people. And when that greeting is not returned my natural instinct is throw my elbow into the side of the offenders jaw. How big of an ass do you have to be not to give or return a simple goddamned salutation? I realize that I can’t go around thrashing people for not saying good morning, but sometimes I have a hard time controlling mouth.
Like this morning when I said “Good morning” to someone and when there was a long pause I added “asshole.” It wasn’t a whisper, I barked it out. The look on the guy’s face was disbelief.
“What did you say?” he asked.
“I said ‘good morning,’ and when you ignored my salutation, I added ‘asshole.’ Because when someone looks at you and smiles and says ‘good morning’ and you just stare back for a moment and then look away, that’s what you are. An asshole.”
He just stared at me. I could see he was wrestling with himself internally. I don’t know if I would classify it as fight or flight, but he’d been insulted and he was torn about how to respond. Then I smiled, relieving him of his obligation to try and be the alpha male.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “It’s been a bad morning…I really apologize.”
“I understand,” I said.
I thought about hammering the point home but decided to leave it alone and continue on my way. I can’t wait for tomorrow morning. There are some things I simply cannot abide.
I hate people when they're not polite.
...Psycho Killer
The Talking Heads
God, I hate it when people greet me in the morning. I will intentionally avoid eye contact and appear to be busy for the sake of not having to interact. If some brave fool says "good morning" anyway, I do suck it up and respond, but it annoys the hell out of me. Always has. I think it's related to being torn out of the bed at ungodly hours as a kid to catch the bus and then have people try to conversate with me at the kitchen table.
I'm with you Paul, if you greet someone they should greet you back.. I don't even care if it's a "Hi" or "Yeah, sure, good for who?" but they should at least respond.
A guy at work sometimes just grunts... no, that's not a reasonable response and it pisses me off each time.
I'm a greeter too. Although, it's only been like that for the past year or so. I used to avoid random people at all costs until recently. Now I figure it's just polite to say hello to a person when you pass them in the hall or something.
Sometimes I botch my replies though., especially in the AM when I'm still half in the bag. My brain can't move that fast that early, so it usually comes out a garbled mess: "How's it doig'?" or "Harg geh braack." I just try to move my mouth around the words that are getting jumbled up, and keep walking. You'd be amazed how many people let shit like that slide.
My thing is, I really don't want to greet people just because they're in front of me, and it seems disingenous for me to engage in pleasantries when in fact - I'm not pleasant.