> “I thought you were a terrible ass-kisser when we started working together.”

> She paused and frowned. “But it actually helped get things done. It was a strategy.” (That is how an impolite person gives a compliment. Which I gladly accepted.)

There is something disappointing about realizing that someone's confidence tricks do work. It sounds like this coworker was grappling whether this is a strategy that they should adopt, because they can see the efficacy, but it feels morally painful.

I'll give the author the benefit of the doubt when using tricks like these for work, especially if you're a politician or marketing person, or something else where appearance and illusion dominates the field...

> One of those people is my wife

But this makes me cringe. I know that if I was this person's partner and I read this article, I would start to feel very uneasy.

With politeness, ideally there is no lie. It's not a polite surface--its a core personality trait. As he described, you may be polite to people you dislike but that's because you know you may simply be having a bad day so no sense in taking it out on a person, or pushing aside a budding relationship. That's really the story of his wife: he was polite, thus he left the door open to meet her again and not sour her impression of him by reacting rudely.

As in the example of the jeweler, the author's politeness caused the woman to reveal information about herself. And as he states later in the article, he actually enjoyed learning about her work. He now understands this person's perspective a bit better.

I would be interested to know how he has handled conversations with similarly polite people. Did they arrive at a common ground, resulting in a profoundly enlightening conversation, or did they end up in a sort of politeness stalemate, with neither party wanting to disclose information about themselves?

In other words, a polite person forgives other people for inadvertent impoliteness and recognizes the intent behind the words.

For the past few months, I've talk to possible 12-20 people per day, salesmen, marketers, business owners, the works. On occasion, I'll talk to someone and they've completely forgotten who I am, and I find the conversation goes the exact same way as before. Even if I'm 'off script', they're still going through the motions they rely on, and probably don't realize they ask the same questions in the same way and give the same responses.

For my part, there's only so many ways I can respond to a given situation. So what if I happen to fall back to well worn neural paths, and spit out "wow, that's sounds so hard".

The mechanisms and communication patterns are repeated, but every interaction and person is unique, and there's nothing cheap in that.

You may decry it as "canned" all you want, but it's a phrase designed purely to allow the conversation to flow and to make the listener feel like they aren't being put on the spot. I bet you have a bunch of canned questions/phrases you trot out in social situations too, for various reasons, you just haven't catalogued them.

Instead you could say something like "I don't know much about that line of work, what sort of challenges do you face?", and I think you'd get the same results. His phrase gets the same response while using less words.

This and other statements only work when he is actually listening and genuinely interested.

"For all of my irony I really do want to know about the process of hanging jewelry from celebrities."

On the other hand, I know what he means when he says "I’ve found that people will fear your enthusiasm and warmth, and wait to hear the price." I know someone who operates like him, and based on that experience, it's weird for someone to be super nice and try to engage you enthusiastically when they know nothing about you. Maybe the person I know just does it wrong, I'm not sure, but even if they are genuine, I always have an inkling suspicion that they aren't.

For example, contrast how the following two sentences make you feel: "That sounds hard" and "I don't know much about that line of work, what sort of challenges do you face?" The first sympathizes with you whereas the second is more interrogatory which distances the speaker. The first is something a friend might say and the second is something an interviewer might say. Lastly, the line isnt meant to be a literal script pages long, but rather as an icebreaker to make this person feel like they can talk to you without being interrogated. Where the conversation goes after that is completely unknown. This is also the logic behind trying to put off asking "what do you do", because you again become an interviewer.

However, as I see it, the pleasant lie baked into the original case is essentially "regardless of what I might genuinely think about what you just said, I'm going to give a response to make you feel good about yourself thereby making me more likeable."

*rephrasing

It's not like it's rocket science (apologies to rocket scientists), you could almost certainly understand if you took a few minutes to try. Not only that, but who says that's the only thing I want to talk about anyway?

Sure, one can be. But what about with people you find incredibly boring or distasteful? Usually we'd just choose not to interact with those people, but that's not being charming.

I agree with your parent comment, where a script that includes a fake reaction cheapens the interaction. Be open to diversity is a more honest way to be charming.

EDIT: 6d0debc071, for some reason I can't reply once more. But my answer is very much in the line of mbech last comment here. Use something that doesn't involve deception. A question rather than an affirmation.

Exactly. I'd have few issues if the original author had used a canned response like "Oh, do you enjoy it?" or anything that didn't involve deception.

I wasn't saying that you should, indeed some of the most boring people I know find themselves endlessly interesting. The scenario I'm suggesting is closer to: You give people a chance to interest you, your interests don't align with theirs - now what?