Things I'm Looking Forward To Doing Now That I'm British: Number Six

[nanila]

(Carrying on now that I'm almost settled back into a normal routine...)

6. Using “doing nothing in a pointed manner” as a legitimate form of protest. This may be indistinguishable from apathy on the outside, but inside, oh, it is not.

For instance, you are in a restaurant. The service is terrible. The food is inedible. You do not send it back. You make no remark upon the subject to the manager or to your companions. You pay your bill and you walk out. And you spend the rest of the evening simultaneously seething and feeling superior because you have been unspeakably, killingly, immovably polite.

Comments

[alwayswondered]

If you are REALLY furious, you quietly press 'No' on the card machine when it asks if you want to add a tip.

If service is already included in the bill, you pay it silently and resentfully and vow, without ever articulating your intention, never to return.

[pulchritude]

Oh man, haha, I perfected that before I even went to the UK!

Though now that I'm back in China...I'm looking forward to being a difficult customer! Since that's how anything gets done. Well, I hope I can get over my politeness, first! XD;;;;

[legionseagle]

I'm reminded of the Kipling poem Et Dona Ferentes. Unabashed imperialism with a core observation underpinning it:

Build on the flanks of Etna where the sullen smoke-puffs float —
Or bathe in tropic waters where the lean fin dogs the boat —
Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite —
But oh, beware my Country, when my Country grows polite!

[nanila]

If you are REALLY furious, you quietly press 'No' on the card machine when it asks if you want to add a tip.

Ooh, you know, I've only ever done that once, and my hand was shaking violently when I did it.

If service is already included in the bill, you pay it silently and resentfully and vow, without ever articulating your intention, never to return.

One of the legends of my lab is about a former (Canadian) colleague, who dared to write unflattering comments in a guest book about a fancy restaurant where we had a Christmas dinner. Everyone else was mortified, even though the comments were completely justified! (We paid the service on the bill too.)

[nanila]

Yes, I'm afraid some of these are cheating a bit for me, because moving here was more like finding a culture that suited my personality rather than having to force myself to behave in an unnatural manner.

Good luck with increasing your bolshiness!

[nanila]

That last line does a pretty good job of banishing the discomfort caused by reading some of the earlier ones!

[legionseagle]

I know, it's that classic example of what I think Orwell referred to as "illuminated by blinding flashes of vulgarity" about Kipling. I do really think he was actually possessed; there's no other writer I can think of who can swing so dramatically from the insightful to the "He said WHAT???"

[oursin]

Is this the same as 'patience offensive'? I deployed that this morning outside the newsagents, to which my ingress was delayed by woman encumbered with 2 scooters, and her small child who was pushing the door open, not very successfully.

[nanila]

Yes. You can feel additionally superior if the person against whom you've deployed it fails to apologise.