So, how much do you earn?
Unusually someone else disembarked the train at my stop tonight and kindly helped me with my shopping bags up to the main road, a journey of less than two minutes (if you’re not heavily laden). In the space of that time I was asked where my accent was from; why I was coming home so late and laden; what I did for a living; where I worked; in what kind of business; and, then, for which firm specifically.
As anyone will tell you, I’m a chatterbox with no notion of TMI who will speak frankly on a wide variety of subjects both general and personal and, yet, I absolutely hate to be asked a direct personal question.
I have come to believe (and I am open to correction) that it is a particularly Irish trait to avoid asking a direct personal question and to consider them rude; I never remember being subjected to such interrogations at home.
In fact, when I was young, this particular conversational characteristic amused me mightily and I turned it into a game. I remember as a snotty teenager accepting a lift from an unbelievably nosey man who spent fifteen minutes throwing out conversational gambits and asking the innocent general questions permitted, in what became for him an increasingly feverish attempt to figure out who I was exactly and where I fell in society: who was my father, which pub did he drink at, which school did I attend, were my family local or blow-ins? This was frustrating for him and a game for me because, notwithstanding his curiosity, piqued by my teasing, normal good manners forbade any direct personal questions and so his only recourse was to give me information and hope that I would reciprocate. He told me his daughter’s name - she was in second year at the convent, I must know her surely, tall blonde, on the basketball team. He drank at Morton’s but was put out at the recent renovations, did my parents have any views on the matter, etc. I teased the poor man unmercifully with my failure to co-operate - if only he’d known that with one direct question I’d’ve been so pole-axed I’d’ve told him anything.
Friends tell me that this kind of interrogation is only a friendly way of showing interest and making friends but to my mind there is nothing friendly about asking a question which leaves the interrogatee no option but to answer where they may not want to, lie or to tell the questioner to mind their own business.
Now you will say that there are subtle, graceful ways of deflecting nosey enquiries but I am not a mistress of the subtle and graceful and, honestly, I am usually so blindsided by the query on the one hand and stunned by the bad manners (as I see it) on the other, that any attempt at poised dissembling is beyond me, to say nothing of the fact that I have a speaking face and, I think, often betray my surprise (or more) at the question. In any event, experience has taught me that even when I have had my wits about me, someone vulgar enough to mistake interrogation for conversation will not be so easily rebuffed. Sufficeth to say I usually end up resentfully telling the truth because, after all, the information sought is only the sort that would naturally emerge on acquaintance anyway.
The guy who helped me with my shopping tonight was certainly not exceptional in his conversational style - I went to a neighbour’s party a couple of weeks ago where I lost count of the number of people who asked me where I was from; no, where I was from originally; had I spent any time in America; what did I do; did I commute into London; etc? All of this information I would have willingly volunteered and more had it formed part of the conversational dance which, more than anything, requires the investment of a little time and the desire to simply enjoy the dance and your dance partner.
If I met someone at a party it would never occur to me to ask those kind of questions obviously because I was raised to think it bad manners but, also because I’m just not that interested (a fact which punctures my superiority a little). I might well be interested in the person I’m speaking to but I don’t care whether they make their bread typing, speculating on pork bellies, fixing cars or selling ice-cream out of the back of a van. We all have to make a living and some people do make an interesting living but what my friends do to pay the bills rarely has any impact on me; once I know what it is, I don’t do anything with the information. What are all of these nosey people hoping for - to show me their rash over canapes and cocktails, to get some free legal advice, to drag me into the kitchen and make me unblock their sink? Of course not, what they want to know and what they think the answers will tell them quickly and efficiently, so that they don’t end up unnecessarily wasting time on me, is how much I earn, what my station in life is and whether I am worth knowing or not; it is this attitude, more than any number of inquisitive enquiries, that offends me.
As anyone will tell you, I’m a chatterbox with no notion of TMI who will speak frankly on a wide variety of subjects both general and personal and, yet, I absolutely hate to be asked a direct personal question.
I have come to believe (and I am open to correction) that it is a particularly Irish trait to avoid asking a direct personal question and to consider them rude; I never remember being subjected to such interrogations at home.
In fact, when I was young, this particular conversational characteristic amused me mightily and I turned it into a game. I remember as a snotty teenager accepting a lift from an unbelievably nosey man who spent fifteen minutes throwing out conversational gambits and asking the innocent general questions permitted, in what became for him an increasingly feverish attempt to figure out who I was exactly and where I fell in society: who was my father, which pub did he drink at, which school did I attend, were my family local or blow-ins? This was frustrating for him and a game for me because, notwithstanding his curiosity, piqued by my teasing, normal good manners forbade any direct personal questions and so his only recourse was to give me information and hope that I would reciprocate. He told me his daughter’s name - she was in second year at the convent, I must know her surely, tall blonde, on the basketball team. He drank at Morton’s but was put out at the recent renovations, did my parents have any views on the matter, etc. I teased the poor man unmercifully with my failure to co-operate - if only he’d known that with one direct question I’d’ve been so pole-axed I’d’ve told him anything.
Friends tell me that this kind of interrogation is only a friendly way of showing interest and making friends but to my mind there is nothing friendly about asking a question which leaves the interrogatee no option but to answer where they may not want to, lie or to tell the questioner to mind their own business.
Now you will say that there are subtle, graceful ways of deflecting nosey enquiries but I am not a mistress of the subtle and graceful and, honestly, I am usually so blindsided by the query on the one hand and stunned by the bad manners (as I see it) on the other, that any attempt at poised dissembling is beyond me, to say nothing of the fact that I have a speaking face and, I think, often betray my surprise (or more) at the question. In any event, experience has taught me that even when I have had my wits about me, someone vulgar enough to mistake interrogation for conversation will not be so easily rebuffed. Sufficeth to say I usually end up resentfully telling the truth because, after all, the information sought is only the sort that would naturally emerge on acquaintance anyway.
The guy who helped me with my shopping tonight was certainly not exceptional in his conversational style - I went to a neighbour’s party a couple of weeks ago where I lost count of the number of people who asked me where I was from; no, where I was from originally; had I spent any time in America; what did I do; did I commute into London; etc? All of this information I would have willingly volunteered and more had it formed part of the conversational dance which, more than anything, requires the investment of a little time and the desire to simply enjoy the dance and your dance partner.
If I met someone at a party it would never occur to me to ask those kind of questions obviously because I was raised to think it bad manners but, also because I’m just not that interested (a fact which punctures my superiority a little). I might well be interested in the person I’m speaking to but I don’t care whether they make their bread typing, speculating on pork bellies, fixing cars or selling ice-cream out of the back of a van. We all have to make a living and some people do make an interesting living but what my friends do to pay the bills rarely has any impact on me; once I know what it is, I don’t do anything with the information. What are all of these nosey people hoping for - to show me their rash over canapes and cocktails, to get some free legal advice, to drag me into the kitchen and make me unblock their sink? Of course not, what they want to know and what they think the answers will tell them quickly and efficiently, so that they don’t end up unnecessarily wasting time on me, is how much I earn, what my station in life is and whether I am worth knowing or not; it is this attitude, more than any number of inquisitive enquiries, that offends me.