It is a truth universally acknowledged that shitty things happen to good people for no reason. We’ve already addressed how to comfort someone when they’re dealing with the death of a loved one, but unfortunately that’s far from the only bad thing that can happen to someone you care about. So how can you best comfort them in these times?
Firstly, make sure you keep the focus on them. Ask if they’re okay and ask what they need, whether it’s a shoulder to cry on or someone to make them dinner or to be left alone for a while. It’s really tempting to bring up your own personal thoughts or experiences like you would in other conversations, but you should save those for later, otherwise it comes off as trying to use their trauma to talk about yourself. You don’t want your friend to have to deal with your worries on top of theirs.
As things progress, you should be able to offer advice that comes from personal experience (if applicable), but avoid telling your friend what they should or should not do unless they need to step away from some clearly harmful behavior. Everyone reacts in their own way to traumatic situations. For instance, if your friend is going through a breakup, don’t tell them to get out and start dating immediately even if that worked well for you in the past. But if they ask how you’ve dealt with breakups, mention it, and continue supporting their decisions whether they match yours or not.
I’ve found “being there for someone” is actually incredibly difficult. I’m the type of person prone to wanting to fix things, and give solutions and advice. I mean, hello, you’re reading my etiquette advice right now. But not all people need their problems biggest solved immediately. Sometimes they’re only ready for smaller problems to be solved, or just to mourn a situation before they go about solving it. Pay attention to that, and offer your presence in smaller ways, whether it’s offering to see a movie or help them sell some furniture on Craigslist.
Importantly, avoid “I told you so” and all other iterations of this phrase. Even if you’ve been telling this friend for years that their boyfriend sucks/their roommate is crazy/they need to pay attention at work or they’ll get fired, reminding them of this will only make them feel worse. And if you’re the type of person for whom being right matters more than that, examine yourself. You may have been right all along, but sometimes people need to discover things in their own ways, otherwise they won’t learn the lessons well enough. Focus on helping your friends grow so they don’t make similar mistakes in the future, rather than pointing out all the things they already got wrong.
This is the only thing made of tin with which I am familiar.
Have an anniversary coming up and don’t know what to get your partner? These are the traditional anniversary gifts for each milestone year:
1st: paper
5th: wood
10th: tin (is anything even made out of tin anymore?)
15th: crystal
20th: china
25: silver
50th: gold
75th: diamond
Now, Emily Post says that guests attending an anniversary party are supposed to bring the appropriate category of gift. However, I think celebrating anniversaries that are not your own is SUPER WEIRD and except for a 50th anniversary, they should not be public things. My grandparents had a MARVELOUS 50th anniversary party and as far as I know, no one brought gifts (my cousins and I had to wear color-coded teeshirts to make it clear which of my grandparent’s five kids we belonged to, which, at 12, was gift enough.)
These days, the “Good Guy Discount” has been getting a lot of press. Basically it entails asking for a discount for no other reason than “I’m a good guy, you’re a good guy, so maybe you could give me a discount.” Barf.
Recently, This American Life talked about this good guy discount, and I loved that it didn’t go in the direction I had expected. They sent out a reporter to three different stores where he asked for the good guy discount. He was actually successful in once instance, but ultimately felt that it was “smarmy” and like saying “the thing I’m going to do as a good guy is ask you to do me a favor and cost yourself money, that’s what a good guy I am.”
This has been the problem I have had since the first time I heard about the “Good Guy Discount.” Only a person who is not a good guy asks for a discount for no reason. It’s super pressurey and puts the sales person on the spot when they are already in a position where they don’t have much power. And it is always bad etiquette to make someone feel uncomfortable unnecessarily.
The best way to get a discount is to a) have a good reason (some kind of damage, paying in cash (but only in the type of situation where it is strongly more desirable to get cash), or just genuinely being a good guy. I have most often been given discounts when I didn’t ask for them, and I guess seemed really excited about what I was buying (also sometimes it helps to walk away and think about it and come back). But also, this has MOSTLY happened to me at antiques/vintage clothes fairs where there is expected to be some degree of haggling and you are dealing directly with the owner and they have high incentive to sell as much as possible.
Excuse me if I seem bitter, but there’s something I need to get off my chest. I’ve lived in New York City my entire life, in apartments, sometimes one-bedrooms I shared with a parent. I’m of an age where peers are beginning to have kids, or think about having kids, which always raises the question–do we raise little precious in the big, bad city? Or do we move to the suburbs “for the children”? Of course, living in a non-urban area is a FINE AND GREAT LIFE CHOICE and you should make it if it’s for you. Personally, I’m a fan of being from a city. Both lifestyles also have their perks and drawbacks, and it’s just a matter of what works for you and your family.
Anyway, recently I’ve come across a lot of people who are trying to game the system by raising their children in a big city, but then moving to the suburbs just in time for middle school. Their kid will get to peacock about being a “city kid” while basking in the comfort and societal normalcy of suburban life, and also might have a better chance at getting into a “good” school. Plus, the parents then get to say they were the cool ones who were totally fine with balancing an exciting city life with a baby. There are lots of things that bother me about this, but the main one is that these kids (and their parents) rarely bother to learn apartment etiquette. To them it’s not important. They’re going to be leaving anyway.
We’ve gone over some basics of apartment etiquette, but the main premise that a lot of people can’t wrap their heads around is that even though you have four walls a door, you are not really isolated. As I write this I can hear my neighbor’s dog barking, the guy on the sidewalk shoveling out his driveway, and my upstairs neighbor playing piano. This might sound like torture to some people, but I think it’s good for us to remember we aren’t alone in this world. Your presence and actions affect others.
So if you have a kid in an apartment, for no matter how long, here are some things you should know and start implementing.
Do not leave your strollers in the hallway. I know your apartment is small. Everyone’s is. That’s why you shouldn’t have gotten the 30 pound stroller with the shock wheels that won’t fold up in the first place. The hallways are for public use, and save for umbrellas, wet shoes, and mayyybe a trash bag left out at night and taken down first thing in the morning, you should not keep your stuff out there.
Understand when it’s time to be quiet. Obviously few parents can help a screaming infant in the middle of the night, and most apartment dwellers are pretty forgiving of noise. We all get that we share walls. But you should teach your kids early and often that hallways are not for screaming, not to jump or pound on floors, and not to practice instruments after a reasonable time at night (or too early in the morning). And for everyone, if you’re having a party or expect to be making a lot of noise past that “reasonable” time, try to give your neighbors a heads up.
Be understanding of the noise others make. Ideally, everyone comes to apartment living with a forgiving attitude. We all try our best to be mindful of others, but some things just can’t be helped. I don’t mind the occasional crying infant, because I know shit happens. In the same forgiving vein, parents, do not assume that every noise made was made specifically to disturb your child. I’ve heard of parents shouting at their neighbors for ringing buzzers or making noise when their child is trying to nap, or for throwing a party past their child’s bedtime. Obviously if something is ongoing and extraordinarily loud you have the right to complain, but part of apartment living means you need to make concessions. Also, children are resilient and learn to sleep through noise! It happens all the time.
The city is not always kid-friendly. People curse on the street. People are drunk in public. People wear “inappropriate” things. This is true of everywhere, but all the more likely the more heavily concentrated the area. In all likelihood, your kid is going to see some things you think they are too young or too innocent to see. Make peace with this now, or move to a place where it’s easier to shelter them.
The subway is not your car. This one goes outside the apartment, but it’s still important. There is a certain efficiency to living that it necessary in a big city, especially when cars are not an option. I see a lot of parents forget about this, and insist on taking up a whole subway bench for their strollers, diaper bags, and whatever entertainment their kids seem to “need.” Once I saw someone set up a playpen on the subway floor. Once again, this is a public space, and space economy needs to be taken into account. Don’t take up more than your allotted number of seats, and if your kid needs entertainment, give them a book, a quiet toy, or an iPad with headphones. Far too many people just let their kids watch movies at full volume and it’s driving me insane.
Plenty of people move to big cities to really have a life there. Those aren’t the people I’m talking about here. Those people care about living in a city, and adapting to what everyday life must look like. I’m talking about the people who say they want to live in a city without understanding that your lifestyle cannot be that of one in the suburbs or in a rural area. Just as I wouldn’t move to a farm and expect a deli to open up around the corner, you should not live in a city and expect the sort of space and privacy country living provides. If you want all the trappings of suburbia, then sorry, that’s where you have to go. We all gotta make sacrifices.
Last week I conducted a phone interview that left me feeling extremely uncomfortable. I was calling this man for research help for a book I’m working on, and within the first ten seconds of the call, he interrupts me to ask me where my name is from. I barely even had time to thank him for speaking to me before he started explaining how he had never heard of “Saxena” before and how it sounds so “exotic,” that he just simply had to know its origins.
Ask anyone with a “weird” (aka non-white) name or look, and they will have a million stories like this, either endlessly being asked where they are from (and getting the “no, where are you really from?” when “New Jersey” isn’t an acceptable answer), questions about “exotic” names, or people just assuming they know where you’re from based on your brown-ish skin color. More than once I’ve had people start speaking a different language to me–Spanish, Hebrew, Greek–and was then made to apologize to them when I revealed that, sorry, I’m not Israeli.
A lot of biracial, non-white, and otherwise “ethnically ambiguous” people are, rightly, fed up with dealing with this and refuse to answer those sorts of questions. Quite a few times I’ve refused too, but after telling another non-white friend about this latest incident, she asked me the honest question, “is there any context in which a question like this is okay?” I think there is! I understand that, despite my name being incredibly common in India, most Americans have likely not heard it, just like I’ve likely not heard most names from other places around the world. It’s natural to be curious about people’s backgrounds, and I think there are ways to talk about it without coming off as an intrusive asshole. It just requires some finesse.
By the way, most of this is written with the assumption that it’s a white person asking a non-white person about their ethnicity. Not that other variants of this don’t happen, but ask around–white people tend to be the ones messing up here. This is what it looks like most of the time.
1. Ask yourself why you need to know. One of the most frustrating things about being asked questions like this all the time is having the experience of being asked, answering, and then watching the person walk away once they’ve gotten their information. Seriously, multiple times I’ve had strangers walk up to me, demand “What are you?,” and leave once I’ve panicked and responded something about my Indian heritage. Do you care because this person seems like a new friend and you want to get to know them better? Are you trying to hit on someone and think this is a good way to break the ice (it’s not)? Did you just see a person who doesn’t look white and want to know why? Would knowing someone’s racial background change how you think of them, and how you interact with them? Dig deep.
2. Understand that you have no right to know. You have every right in the world to ask someone about their name, ethnicity, and country of origin, and they have every right not to answer you, and to call you an asshole. “What’s the matter?” you may be asking, “I’d have no problem talking about my great-great-grandfather who moved here from Scotland if someone asked me.” That’s because having a great-great-grandfather from Scotland is the standard in this country, and I’m speaking as someone who also has great-x-5 ancestors from Scotland. Questions about a white person’s ethnicity rarely result in questions of their belonging, of their right to be where they are. No one asks where you’re “really” from, because the assumption is that it’s here. Most non-white people have at least one story about being asked where they’re “really” from, and then being angrily told to return.
3. Do not open a conversation with this question. If there are no other rules you remember, remember this one. No one likes feeling accosted for personal information, no matter what it is. Walking up to a stranger and demanding to know their racial makeup is incredibly invasive, so if you need to ask, have a decent conversation going first.
4. Think about your relationship to the person you’re asking. I really enjoy talking to all my friends about our various backgrounds. Ancestry and genealogy interest me, so these types of conversations come up all the time in really great ways. However, since they’re my friends, there’s an understanding that they’re interested in and care about me as more than a racial curiosity. I don’t have that trust with a stranger at a bar, or even someone I’ve met once or twice.
5. If you need to ask, make it about your own ignorance. And maybe about names instead of skin color. There’s a big tonal difference between a “What the hell name is that?” and “Wow, I’ve never heard that name before, where is it from?” The former makes the person being asked the weird one for having such a “strange” name, and the latter makes it clear the asker knows they’re ignorant. Most productive, polite conversations I’ve had about my race with someone who didn’t know started with a question like that, in which I could respond that it’s an Indian name, and then we get into a conversation about my heritage. Nothing like that has ever come out of being asked “Wow, why do you look so ethnic?”
6. Be willing to answer every question you ask. Like I said before, these questions have different connotations and consequences when your answer is “we moved from England to Pennsylvania in the 1700s,” but unless you’re willing to dive into your family’s history, don’t ask anyone else about theirs.
7. Read the conversation. Obviously this etiquette advice is apt in any conversation, but especially in ones with “tricky” subjects like this. Is the person excitedly responding to you, or are they trying to change the subject? Do they seem uncomfortable and slow to answer your questions? Make yourself pay attention to things like this, and apologize if you get the sense that you’re coming off as intrusive.
uncommon-courtesy.com 
