Saying Good Bye
Suppose you are in the middle of a conversation with someone. How do you decide when to say good bye?
I think this sort of lesson is taught at the same time as ‘how to tie your shoe-laces’ and ‘how to brush your teeth’. But probably when my parents were giving me these lessons, somewhere in the middle, I just randomly chose to doze off. I am now 22 and I still get extremely confused about it. I should have been less sleepy when I was a kid.
One situation in which it’s easy is when you have a prior appointment with someone at some fixed time. You can then keep chatting comfortably and when it’s time, look at your watch, stand up in a way that shows you know what you are doing and announce, “Oh, it’s 7, I have an appointment with the dentist.”
It’s also easy when the other person has a prior appointment at some fixed time. In most cases, he will tell you that he has to leave in an hour or so and then you can throw all the responsibility to his side of the court, as in, “Sure, just tell me whenever you want to leave.” And then you can sit back and enjoy the conversation.
The situation gets tricky when none of you have an appointment and saying good bye is decided on the basis of extremely ambiguous factors such as running out of topics, or getting bored with each other. The problem with this situation is that the information about the other person is not available with you. Is he bored yet? Is he already too sleepy? Social ethics require that you do not tell someone directly that you are bored with him. You are only allowed to show this with the help of subtle gestures with your eyebrows and such things. These, of course, are not precise.
Being on a lookout for those subtle hints is challenging. You might end up saying good bye when the other person has things to talk about. This might annoy him. Or, you might miss out on all those hints and end up making the person feel like his brain is in a washing machine with a bunch of used baby nappies and he has no clue about the time set on the timer.
Most people are experts at this kind of stuff. They somehow just “know” when it’s time. I lack this skill. I don’t feel bad about this though. I am pretty good at tying my shoe-laces. That compensates for it.
In any case, I do have a temporary solution to use until the time I come up with an actual good one and it is this – I concoct an imaginary appointment with someone. So a typical conversation with me goes like this
The Other Guy : So, we are at the coffee house and suddenly the prof comes in with his underpants all visible and then …
Me : Nice nice, I would sure like to hear the complete story, but hey, I suddenly remember that I had to go snorkelling with a friend right now.
There are problems with this method too. First of all, your excuse has to sound authentic. To test whether your excuse is authentic or not, you can try imagining telling it to a toenail. If you think it will understand that it’s a lie, then almost anyone will understand it’s a lie. For example, you should avoid saying something like, “Sorry friends, it’s my hanging-upside-down-from-the-ceiling time again. Catch you later.” This is just plain wrong.
Secondly, you must ensure that you don’t end up using the same excuse again and again. If you are making too many excuses about visiting the tailor, you should have a very large number of pants too. If you don’t people will understand.
So the best way to do this is to be creative and come up with new excuses every once in a while that sound authentic. This is difficult. But somehow I prefer it to the more conventional figuring out the person’s state of mind from his body language trick.
So yeah, anyway, it’s 11:30 now and I have a tennis match with Jesus Christ.
Oh snap.
hmmm… gud likhe ho…
rohan
July 5, 2009 at 6:33 pm
If both participants in the conversation are well known to each other and also aware of boredom then they can let each other know. Usually this doesn’t lead to animosity. If it does then even better since this saves them both from future boring conversations.
Shishir Dash
July 5, 2009 at 9:24 pm
I am also affected by the same dilemma !
more cases :
1. Huddles with your GF…how do you know you aren’t blocking blood circulation…you know..maybe she is uncomfy and in her mind pre-decided not to let you int he same position (oops ) again ?
2. Sharing dinner with friends…how do you know they are reluctant to order/eat more…bla bla social stuff
3. group events and outings are perfect places for such scenarios to creep in…
Am sure some smiley-faced American author already has a book on it !
but to experience…there is a simple solution : say it !
I always do that…so far no accidents and broken jaws
obviously when talking to a person you are not gonna tell them that they are boring…no body is boring…they just dont have topics aligned to your preference or have run out of those…so nail it on this… not the person !
that’s it…so far it has worked out nicely !
[ PS : such a policy lands you in the group of what the 'really' social people term 'strange' 'different' 'bizarre' etc etc. But I assume that people I talk to, are intelligent enough to understand...don't talk to stupids...helps a lot ]
Anikh
July 6, 2009 at 5:12 pm
@Anikh,
If you don’t talk to stupid people, how will you procreate? Didn’t your grandma tell you when you were a kid that babies are born when an intelligent person talks to a stupid person and then there is an accident with a mosquito?
Vinayak
July 6, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I dont think stupid people help in anythign but wasting time. As of now I am surrounded by hoards of them because I could use some amusement.
No, My grandma never told me this. Infact the first time I was curious about origin of babies, I asked my cousin elder bro, and was told the entire truth.
Anikh
July 6, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Oddly, I face a similar problem, but rather than have an appointment, I just slink off when the person is not looking… Needless to say it has consequences, but luckily people just like to think I am a social idiot and forgive me for it
tgwtt
July 6, 2009 at 8:20 pm
to be labeled a social idiot works when the no. of such instances are small… over time if you continue this…people will take you less seriously.
my question : Why lie at all ? just say that you dont think you have much to talk about and you both can talk later…politely…and leave ! i dont get what the big deal about it…saying the truth is the problem ?
Anikh
July 7, 2009 at 3:39 am
You can say that if you have concluded that you two have nothing to talk about. May be the other person has something. Or may be the other person doesn’t but you do. These are the situations that create problem. Also, if you think you don’t have anything to talk about, that may be because you weren’t really trying to come up with something to talk about and wasting your time trying to figure out when to say goodbye instead. Basically, its complicated.
Vinayak
July 7, 2009 at 8:57 am
When i conclude…i think it will an intelligent guess…if other person still has something he/she is welcome to say it ( i said say it politely )
the rest of your comment starting from ” Or maybe the other person doesn’t but you do…” is just a cat catching its own tail.
stop imagining zombies for your situations…real humans are way too smart or total dumbasses….in either case…makes my case easy !
Anikh
July 7, 2009 at 9:27 am
I soooo agree with everything you said in this post
Tamanna
July 7, 2009 at 10:49 am
@Tamanna : ‘you’ refers to me or Vinayak ?
Anikh
July 7, 2009 at 2:15 pm
the last part of ur post about being creative…heh…why don’t u apply such stuff on urself…i mean.. at 5:00 pm u say …”time to bathe” or u say something like…i have suddenly become too BUSY…this is ridiculous…no one puts it that way..! recently on a call u said “i have to go SOMEWHERE”. unless u specify where… ur excuse won’t sound authentic…
I believe such excuses satify none except urself…for the other person whom u are talking to,the best thing to hear would be “i am running short of topics”…OR ” i am bored”(if you do not have a formal relation with that person…which is very unlikely to happen coz u do not chat with such a person for long…)
runjhun
July 9, 2009 at 6:55 am
Vinayak
July 9, 2009 at 6:28 pm
How about something like, “I want to go to the loo, but I use only Indian”. Should get the job done in most cases.
Sumeet
July 15, 2009 at 4:24 pm