It is fine if it is not lying but so often you ask how are you and get the flowers and butterflies response but when you sit 10 min more they start explaining how miserable they are: as a Dutchman, I do tend to ask why they said how great and excellent they were just minutes ago. And no, it is not just something you do out of politeness: if you just canned response to one thing, how do I know you don't have canned responses to many more things which are in fact lies at this point in time? I don't want to talk with Zendesk, I want to chat with someone I just met in the pub.

It isn’t lying, it is what we consider an appropriate level of sharing. We don’t tend to want to put our burdens on people who may not be interested in hearing it.

After talking to many folks from US I appreciate that. It's like going through the original `SYN ; SYN ACK ; ACK` flow. You are just establishing the conversation, but then the content can start flowing after if there's interest.

To be fair we Americans also poke fun at this. Here in the South I usually say, “Can’t complain,” and most people will finish the adage, “and it wouldn’t do any good if you did.”