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Does anyone else get bothered when people ask you personal questions about your holiday or weekend plans?
I always find this rude. For one thing, maybe I don't want to tell them my plans. For another, maybe I don't have a big event planned for a holiday, and so I always feel uncomfortable and awkward.
What do you think? Do you consider it rude to ask these questions? How do you handle it when you don't have an interesting answer?
This is a non-issue; the proverbial "making a mountain out of a molehill."
On a personal note, even though mine is a very close-knit workplace (most of my industry is this way due to the long hours and relatively close quarters we share) , I tend to be rather private about my personal life. That being said, never have I perceived such questions as "how was your weekend?" or "how was your holiday/time off?" as either rude or an attempt to pry into my private life. If I didn't do much, I usually simply respond by saying with a smile, "Important (insert my first name here) things." If I met up with friends/family or did a fun activity, I simply say that I had a nice time with so and so doing such an such. I also respond in kind with a similar query. It's part of light social interactions. On the extremely rare occasions that anyone has tried to dig too deeply into my life outside of work, it's easy enough to shut that down by being busy or deftly changing the topic. Bottom line is: if you don't want to share your plans, keep your answers light and simple. No need to be bristly about it.
At the end of the day, *you* choose how you feel and respond/react to things in life--not the other people around you in this world. It's not an easy lesson to learn for some people, but it's a valuable one.
Why the exaggeration in trying to make your point? I don't know about the OP, but myself and others who do prefer that that line of questioning in the workplace be absent certainly doesn't mean that we "have constant hurt and insult" in the workplace. Nothing of the sort! Complete exaggeration on your part.
I'm speaking for myself here. I think there are other topics for conversation quite easily that do not pry into other's personal life.
Posters here even admit here that they are asking those questions so they can compare their own lives with the lives of their co-workers. A direct admittance of prying.
The OP used the term 'always' twice in his post, 'always finds it rude,' 'always feel uncomfortable...'
It's small talk. Not a line of questioning. Not prying.
For people with a big hurt feeling antenna, EVERY topic of small talk has the potential to offend, we've seen examples of it here. The issue ain't the topics...
And listen...I'm writing as someone who while not offended by any of these sorts of small talk topics, but who also tends to give short and sweet answers to all of them.
I was in sales for the last 22-years of my working life. Never heard a presentation degrading certain populations.
Sounds fascinating. Can you expound on this?
As I recall for it was back in 1994, he was essentially saying that some people were happy with their plodding along jobs of doing this, doing that, but not him. He wanted to get rich and here was his plan to do it!
Now that may not be degrading to you and that may not be quite what he said, but something in his speech really didn't please me. It may have been that his plan rather dashed ethics or something.
Questions about what you'll be doing over the holiday, or what you did over the holiday -- those come from simple work place civility, it seems to me. But questions like What are you doing this weekend? Or What did you do all weekend? can become problematic when they are asked 45 or 50 weeks out of 52, year after year, by the same people. The inquiry takes on a different tone from casual friendliness. There was a major issue with sexual harassment in our workplace. Major. It didn't end well for some people.
Other than that, casual comments about holidays, I think it's just people making small talk. Not bothersome at all. That's my experience anyway.
It's not small talk because it almost always has definitive definite psychological intent - whether the people who do the asking of questions about weekends and holidays want to admit it or not.
I didn't think it was possible, but that is even more ridiculous than the OP.
"It's totally okay to say 'Nothing special, how about you?'"
I've already stated that, where I live -- a very family-oriented part of the country -- and work, this has actually elicited additional prying responses such as, "Really?" "Oh, no!" and "Don't you have family?" as well as invitations to join another family for what I consider to be a strictly family holiday, which is the last thing I would do. Maybe the initial nicety isn't rude, but continuing to pry and/or asking when you already know the situation and answer could be considered rude and even cruel, depending on the intent.
Paul Fussell fan ("Class"); from what work of his is this?
That's the one. Pages 201-2; last two paragraphs of the book.
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