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 th...