Guest post: Easier and safer to flatter and lie
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Nothing added to nothing is nothing.
He’s fooled himself into thinking a few superficial trappings can fool a survival mechanism (telling a conspecific’s sex) that’s hundreds of millions of years old. We are wired to clock someone’s sex from scores and scores of yards away, even in dim light where all we can make out is a sillhouette and a gait. No doubt many of the other people he thinks he’s fooling are just being nice and humouring him, or hoping to avoid an angry, aggressive “IT’S MA’AM!” response. Even if his makeup was, according to his hair stylist, “on point and flawless,” it might only mean he’d applied it comparatively well, not that it was succeeding in erasing his maleness. Is the stylist going to risk pissing off the guy sitting right there in the chair? Easier and safer to flatter and lie. Stephonknee Wolscht didn’t fool anyone into believing he was a five year old girl; anyone who “accepted” him as such was just playing along, but doing him no favours.
I wonder if this guy’s failure to pass will spur him on to more radical, surgical interventions to “feminize” his facial bone structure and his body shape? For most men, it would take this kind of cheating to “pass,” and even then, the surgical interventions, like the superficial wardrobe, make-up, and comportment gambits, tend to exaggerated and stereotypical.
When I order food at some restaurants, the waitress tells me my choice is awesome.
I know my choices are not always awesome, let alone the food at restaurants. I figure someone told some waitresses their tips would be better if they said that.
If I met the same waitress on the subway and I was eating a sandwich, I bet she wouldn’t tell me it was an awesome choice! What would she get out of that?
It’s strange, people who work for tips seem to find my jokes much funnier than others do. A mystery that will never be solved.
I’ve had good, average, and bad service in several countries over my life. The level of obvious over the top inauthenticity in countries where tipping is expected really stood out though. I certainly haven’t thought to myself that we should introduce tipping to NZ because it results in better service.
Rob: it’s not like everyone comes back from non-tipping Japan disgusted by the sloppy rude service that they got.
Piglet, quite.
That should be countries up above btw.
As for tipping, because it is now so much a part of their salary, and not an added bonus, we are expected to tip even for lousy service. Therefore, we end up receiving lousy service because there is no incentive. I try to treat waiters and waitresses nicely, and would like the same in return. I usually get that.