Call me selfabsorbed but I genuinely hate when i don’t even get an acknowledgement from people I hold the door for. I don’t want you to smile or say thank you or look me in the eyes but jist make some sort of indication that you know this door didn’t fucking magically pry itself open you twat.
It happens almost half the time, and I literally hold the door for everyone and can’t help not doing it. Every time I wish i could go back in time and slam it in their face, I’m not your personal bellboy
Do you do nice things for the reward or just to be nice? If it’s the latter, then the other person’s reaction shouldn’t matter. Letting it irritate you wastes your own energy for no purpose, and the other person will never know about it, you’ll just continue to seethe, which will be added to the next time it happens.
If you understand my frustration then you can also understand that people do things just to be nice but are well within their right to feel disappointed by people who won’t acknowledge their gesture, who almost seem to think such a gesture is meaningless or furthermore entitled to it.
I’ll keep doing nice things, and I’ll keep seething when people are rude in turn when I’m doing nice things, don’t put the moral failure on me.
I don’t believe I’m putting a moral failing anywhere, but I’m sorry that what I said made you feel that way.
The point I’m making is that none of us can control how others behave, and getting angry at them only serves to make us bitter. By disengaging our own feelings from this act, we can lead more content lives, and that’s helpful for our own mental health.
Quit being over analytical nerds. It’s a common courtesy to acknowledge someone doing something nice for you, and it’s totally normal to feel disappointed when that breaks down
No doubt you’re a redditor. Let me guess, you’re probably one of those people who just wished to ‘be left alone’ by everyone when they’re just being polite to you and exercising the basic norms of the social contract? .
I take it you don’t acknowledge people doing polite things for you because you don’t owe them anything? Do you not appreciate when someone’s polite to you?
Yeah it's not true. Its just some Reddit aphorism that gets passed around as fact. Up-nod or down-nod does not matter, neither are (at a universal level) related to how you know someone, strangers give me both types all the time.
I actually just replied to another comment about this, but I totally agree!!
Americans are so fucking rude. I hold open doors and hardly ever a damn thank you, much less getting doors held open for me. I usually just loudly say "You're welcome!" but they just ignore that too. Makes me never want to hold doors open to strangers again, but the spirit of my grandmother would be disappointed in me and I just can't help it at this point.
It used to make me irrationally angry as well, but at some point in the past few years I’ve tried to stop letting things that happen in public get to me. My expectations are so low and the effort I put out anymore is even lower. When I’m out and about in public I try my best to keep to myself and ignore anything that isn’t gonna directly affect me.
Maybe this is a selfish way to go about it, but it is what it is. Being courteous doesn’t really benefit me in public most of the time. I’m not an outright dick to total strangers, I just don’t try very hard to be overly friendly.
when i was in high school i had severe anxiety from repressed, untreated ADHD (which sometimes made it hard for me to control my tone of voice) that would make me overthink the fuck out of scenarios like this. my mind would race with how i should enunciate "thanks" the right way and wondering if my voice will seem shaky or nervous, and by the time i was ready it'd be too late lmao
I mean, why expect people to acknowledge something that they didn't request or need? Like, if they're holding an armfull of stuff, you help them with the door, and they don't acknowledge your help then yeah, you have a case. However, if they're just minding their business and you randomly open the door for them, then I think you're kinda being unreasonable to expect some kind of appreciation from someone when you don't know what their situation is.
Like, do you really expect some kind of report card on how good a boy/girl you were for holding open a door for some rando who might, for all you know, have a family member in the hospital, or be struggling to afford their bills, etc etc. If so, that lowkey makes you the Nice Guy asshole, expecting extra emotional labor from that person who really didn't ask for or even want that interaction with you.
Obviously, people are allowed to be preoccuppied with serious personal problems and it’s not fair to blow something like this out of proportion but at the same time,
Like, do you really expect some kind of report card on how good a boy/girl you were for holding open a door for some rando who might, for all you know, have a family member in the hospital, or be struggling to afford their bills, etc etc. If so, that lowkey makes you the Nice Guy asshole, expecting extra emotional labor from that person who really didn't ask for or even want that interaction with you.
Nah, I’m not getting into this nice guy debate about emotional labor, way too much abstraction over unproblematic common courtesy. I never said I was some paragon of virtue, I’m just a regular dude practicing social norms I’ve been taught and maybe trying to make both our days just a little bit better.
I mean, whether or not you wanna get into/acknowledge it is your choice, but that doesn't change the fact that that's what people feel when they don't feel up to giving you feedback for doing something they didn't ask for 🤷🏻♀️
Like, do you really expect some kind of report card on how good a boy/girl you were for holding open a door.
Yeah that's a totally fair representation of what the other person was arguing, lmao. Expecting some acknowledgement for doing a small gesture for others isn't the same as wanting a report card validating your moral character.
If so, that lowkey makes you the Nice Guy asshole, expecting extra emotional labor from that person who really didn't ask for or even want that interaction with you.
My god, the amount of assumptions and negativity you're projecting onto the other user here is impressive.
i get kind of flustered when people are holding doors and there's traffic going both ways i don't know who should go first so i'll cut through fast to remove myself, it probably seems dickish but i'm just trying to get out of the way