the art of greeting
I hated my English professor in college but loved some of the work he asked to do in our first year of English in college. One such was to observe something, anything for an hour and write about it. Not a report but write everything that happened in that hour. Lazy as I am, all I did was describe some gaits of some of the people I knew well. But now, years later, I appreciate that exercise more than anything, and understand its importance in advertising.
My one hour observation in office began when I accidentally began to notice the strange ways that people greeted each other in the course of the day. What struck me more was the greeting that was exchanged between two people who met for the umpteenth time during the day. They've reached a point where saying anything is too tiring and instead of words, its just exchanges in facial expressions.
The laziest of the lot is an acknowledgment greeting that's done just by lifting up the eyebrows. Next in line is the nod. The slow, "wassup", Dude-like nod. The next would probable be the combination of the above two: the nod with the eyebrow lift. Sometimes, like icing on cake, the last expression can come with a smile. The last of these and the dumbest of the lot I feel is the combination of all of these followed by an inaudible greeting. You actually do the nod, lift your eyebrows, smile and say the Hi but only to your ears. Your lips do the greeting but with the speakers on mute. I laughed my ass out when I saw someone do that. It's funnier when I caught myself doing that!
Now the reasons of the above expressions too is quite interesting. On self analysis, I figured that most often, I lift my eyebrow and greet someone when I have the slightest inclination to return back the greeting, or better, I have no clue who the guy is but find it rude to not return a greeting. The nod too is more or less for the same reason but the level of hatred towards the person is slightly less and this time, I recognize the guy vaguely by his face. His name is stuck somewhere in the front back of my brain but I am in no mood to rattle my head to get his name out. But if he/she is someone who my mind suddenly relates to for some reason, then my day is horribly srewed. The difficulty to fight the blind spot in the cognitive section of the brain is a tiring, irritating and mentally strenuous thing.
The last in the list, the inaudible greeting is the funniest and the dumbest as I've told before. It is often done, and I've seen this in others and in me, when you don't know the name of the person greeting you or worse, don't know the person at all.
A factor that guides the expression-full greeting is the hierarchy of the people you are greeting back. Like for example, the eye-lifting rarely happens to someone who is above you hierarchically. In fact, in the above example, it's the inaudible greeting that prevails. You know that the person in front of you is a big guy but don't recall his name nor who exactly is. The eye-lifting is prevalent when you are greeted by your irritating junior who is trying his best to get some attention by becoming painfully people-friendly.
By the time I had seen all of these different types of greetings and evaluated them, it was over a day. The next day, I sat at the cafeteria, just to pick up another one of the human stereotypes to observe further and write about.
My one hour observation in office began when I accidentally began to notice the strange ways that people greeted each other in the course of the day. What struck me more was the greeting that was exchanged between two people who met for the umpteenth time during the day. They've reached a point where saying anything is too tiring and instead of words, its just exchanges in facial expressions.
The laziest of the lot is an acknowledgment greeting that's done just by lifting up the eyebrows. Next in line is the nod. The slow, "wassup", Dude-like nod. The next would probable be the combination of the above two: the nod with the eyebrow lift. Sometimes, like icing on cake, the last expression can come with a smile. The last of these and the dumbest of the lot I feel is the combination of all of these followed by an inaudible greeting. You actually do the nod, lift your eyebrows, smile and say the Hi but only to your ears. Your lips do the greeting but with the speakers on mute. I laughed my ass out when I saw someone do that. It's funnier when I caught myself doing that!
Now the reasons of the above expressions too is quite interesting. On self analysis, I figured that most often, I lift my eyebrow and greet someone when I have the slightest inclination to return back the greeting, or better, I have no clue who the guy is but find it rude to not return a greeting. The nod too is more or less for the same reason but the level of hatred towards the person is slightly less and this time, I recognize the guy vaguely by his face. His name is stuck somewhere in the front back of my brain but I am in no mood to rattle my head to get his name out. But if he/she is someone who my mind suddenly relates to for some reason, then my day is horribly srewed. The difficulty to fight the blind spot in the cognitive section of the brain is a tiring, irritating and mentally strenuous thing.
The last in the list, the inaudible greeting is the funniest and the dumbest as I've told before. It is often done, and I've seen this in others and in me, when you don't know the name of the person greeting you or worse, don't know the person at all.
A factor that guides the expression-full greeting is the hierarchy of the people you are greeting back. Like for example, the eye-lifting rarely happens to someone who is above you hierarchically. In fact, in the above example, it's the inaudible greeting that prevails. You know that the person in front of you is a big guy but don't recall his name nor who exactly is. The eye-lifting is prevalent when you are greeted by your irritating junior who is trying his best to get some attention by becoming painfully people-friendly.
By the time I had seen all of these different types of greetings and evaluated them, it was over a day. The next day, I sat at the cafeteria, just to pick up another one of the human stereotypes to observe further and write about.
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