There is a new void in our vocabulary.
It's recently come to my attention that a pair of important expressions have been excommunicated from our daily routine. Those two expressions are the ever important please and thank you.
To cloak his identity, I will not use a name, but a superior of mine confessed to not using the word please when asking for help from his wife. He is instead, repeatedly corrected by his three-year-old daughter who demands he complete his requests with a polite "please."
If a grown man is receiving lessons on manners from his daughter, who isn't yet in elementary school, then it may not be a case of us not teaching manners to the next generation. The young girl, in her demand for politeness, is obviously growing up with some sense of propriety.
She knows her Ps and Qs, so they aren't lost on today's youth.
Maybe as we age, we just get sick and tired of being overly nice. It doesn't mean we're being rude, it may just get exhausting to overdo it all the time.
When I think about it, I can't recall the last time I specifically said please, but I always say thank you. I think as long as you've covered one of them in a conversation you won't have burned any bridges or stepped on anybody's toes.
Please may get overlooked for a number of reasons. Maybe you ask for a lot of things and have done so with a please so often it's lost its merit, and to you, it doesn't mean anything anymore.
Politeness could just be so automatic for some people that it's lost its lustre. I'm guilty for not saying please or thank you to friends or family. Sometimes I operate under the assumption that they know I'm grateful because of course I am, and it's possible to be so nice it may seem that one is pandering for favour.
Seinfeld covered this topic in an episode where Jerry and the gang use a friend's season tickets to the Rangers game. Jerry thanks the friend for the tickets and they go to the game. When asked if he thanked the man again the following day, Jerry said he did not because he had already thanked him previously. It's suggested that Jerry really snubbed this guy by not thanking him again, and Jerry said he was putting his foot down on overthanking people.
Is it possible to be too nice?
That may be what happens in some cases. If you say please and thank you for each request, maybe on the next one, you think the person helping you out doesn't need to hear it.
It's not necessarily rude to skip over your pleases in an encounter. Apparently I do it all the time, and it's certainly never meant as a slight. In most cases, I consider myself quite pleasant without the extra effort in showing off my well-rehearsed manners.
Now that I'm aware of it, and probably some of you are too, we can all make an effort to say please more. Maybe it's just what everyone else needs to hear.
