How to be polite

I was wondering about this. As a nation the Brits are often held up as being paragons of politeness, but is this true and is this something that always happens? What about when we have to be rude to be kind? There have been a couple of things lately that got me thinking about this.

For a start, there are people in the office on diets and they struggle to turn down offers of food when someone comes in with cakes on birthdays or after a holiday. There is a real sense of awkwardness when they do this and you can tell they are not happy about hurting someone's feelings over this but they really want to stick to their diet. They are not being rude of course but are worrying about seeming so. That is such a British thing to do.

Then there was a case the other day where someone told a story of a past office relationship that turned sour. All they did was politely ask a colleague to stop talking for a little while so they could concentrate on their work. This was after months of the other person talking non-stop. They were not rude in the way they said it but the other person got really upset. How do you deal with something like that? Again it is awkward but actually this was a genuine thing where the person needed to concentrate and they were polite. We often worry about being polite and seeming rude but also upsetting people. Can you be so polite that you become submissive?

Things we Brits apparently do that is so polite:

• Queuing - this may be true and we don't like anyone who queue jumps. Wait in line like everyone else! If we had to wait an hour then so must you. It is our own punishment to you for turning up later than us.
• Tea drinking - this is seen as being very civilised and something the British do as a ritual. Of course there is not the ritual surrounding it that the Chinese or Japanese have but we do like our tea and everything seems to stop for a good cuppa. You have to get the order of milk and tea correct though or you are seen as a heathen!
• Awkward street dance - we have all done this one. You are on the widest pavement in the world and yet still you and the person coming the other way want to take the same line. You get really close and end up doing a little jig while apologising to get round each other.
• Saying sorry all the time - we apologise for everything it seems, even when the other person is in the wrong or has done something bad. We feel sorry for pointing it out to them and apologise to them!

Of course there are some people (Daily Mail readers if this twitter account is to be believed...and I believe it) that like to be rude to others. You know they use the anonymity of the internet to be trolls but does that mean that deep down inside every British person there is a rude person struggling to come out and we feel our only outlet to show this is in online attacks of others?