Column Chronicles: The politics of being polite

The politics of being polite

Frank Cotolo
August 25, 2016

Not everyone can be nice all of the time but if you work at being polite it may benefit you greatly.

It isn't enough to simply say, "Thank you" and "You're welcome" or to open a door for an elderly person and let them go in first. You have to be extremely polite.

Here are some things you should know about how polite people excel in life.

A polite person always meets a person by tilting his or her head and acting as if the meeting is an honor. Of course, not everyone you meet will find it pleasant if you put your hands on their head and put it in a position you want. But that seemingly invasive move will not bother the person for long because you are treating that person special, saying with your motions that you are worthless by comparison.

(Try not to poke the person in the ear when you tilt his or her head because if you cause bleeding, nothing will save the meeting from being a failure.)

A polite person keeps using whatever name he or she presents upon a meeting. If you meet a truly polite person who says, "My name is Anastasia," you need to keep calling that person Anastasia. A lot of people would become too familiar in the conversation and start calling Anastasia other names, like the A-man or A-gal, according to his or her appearance, or Anastasiamento or Anna The Stasia or Anna Banana Stasia or Annamation or Annastation Manager or The Annamator and so on. This is a disrespectful move and let's face it, eventually no one is clever enough to come up with hundreds of variations.

A polite person doesn't bring up a topic to show how much he or she knows about the topic. If the conversation is aboutyour careers and suddenly there is a lull, you shouldn't say, "When your read 'Of Mice And Men' by John Steinbeck, did you immediately notice the Biblical references because I did." Or, if there is a lull, a polite person would not suddenly say, "When I edit a film I try to do as much relational editing as possible because I know the director would want to suggest the associations of ideas between the shots." Sure, anyone you meet will most likely enjoy watching movies but you cannot be sure they are adept at specific movie tasks. It just isn't polite to assume such things just to show off.

A polite person does not gossip, so if you discover that the person you just met knows another person you know, don't say, "Hey, that guy was in porn once," or "I know her, she went to bed with my father," or "Is it just me or does he always have body odor?"

On the same matter, a polite person doesn't judge people. You know someone is not polite when she or he is introduced to you and says, "I'm happy to meet you because I didn't want to meet the Chinese man who catered this party. I mean what kind of caterer comes to one of his jobs? That means one of two things - he doesn't trust the help or he is not confident that his food is good. Either way, I am not eating at this party. What about you?

Being polite never allows anyone to immediately dislike you and let’s face it, you need to be liked to get ahead in life, even though some A-holes get very far otherwise.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.