to think that basic social skills have for the most part gone out the window

[ohboob]

I recently joined a craft group. I've been about 5/6 times. Everyone is very nice and friendly. They are all intelligent, university educated, mostly married, kind people. And yet every single time I go I get very brief hello's from all of them but no one ever says 'how are you' or asks the new people in the group their names or introduces themselves. I've seen 3 people start coming since I joined and all have had the same reaction. I find it so rude. They literally just sit there. My first week another new person joined and despite the fact that it was my first evening I was the only person to welcome her and ask her how she was, and how long she had been doing her craft for, where she was from, etc. etc.

Surely that is just basic manners (and social etiquette) to say hello and introduce yourself, so that the new person feels welcome? And then to ask them a bit about themselves and maybe tell them what they are working on. There are anywhere from 5 people in the group to 15 each week.

I took a friend with my last night who was really interested in joining and she had the same reaction. People looked up and said a brief hello and then just carried on working and chatting amongst themselves. It takes place in a pub and the whole point of the group is supposed to be the social side. My friend said that if she had turned up by herself she wouldn't return because it felt so unwelcoming. The very first week I joined it was the same and if I wasn't chatty and comfortable with just jumping in and making conversation I could have easily sat there all evening with no one talking to me at all and without knowing a single name of anyone there.

The funny thing is that if I make conversation and ask people how they are they start chatting and all are very friendly, so it boggles me as to why they are so rude initially. Do we just not learn manners anymore? I've come across this problem a lot with my generation (late twenties, early thirties) and it is just not how I was brought up. Very few people seem to have the basic social skills. Ironically one of the women last night was saying that she was terrified when she first joined because it's daunting walking into a group of strangers (as I found it when I joined) but she still wasn't welcoming to my friend who was in the same position as she had once been in. Why do people not connect that if they have found it hard, then others will and they need to make the effort to smile and say hello.

Gah! This is really bugging me. I don't know if it is shyness or rudeness.

Absolutely. They should have social skills lessons in schools. Life skills.

do you really think this is something that has changed, rather than that some people are like it and some aren't? I'm sure I've come across situations like this from time to time for years.
it might be that older people are better at it as it's something you learn at some point in your life (I was in my late 20s when I discovered talking to strangers was a skill you could learn pretty easily) and older people have had more time to learn it?

YANBU I often wish people would do this. However, I'm really not good at doing it myself. I do think you need to be taught these skills. I know it seems natural and common sense behaviour but I think it is actually a learned skill. I also think it's to do with class. Middle class people tend to do the 'putting people at their ease' thing. I always feel I am not really entitled to take on this role in a group situation and I suspect this is the case for many people who are not middle class.

I want to join an amateur dramatics group near me and I psyched myself up to go along on my own when I casually mentioned it to a friend who looked horrified.

She said that she knew someone who went along, no one spoke to her and after about ten minutes someone turned round to her and said "new girl, go up on the stage and do your audition pieces - I presume you've prepared"

Not an introduction to anyone, not even himself - 50 plus strangers staring at her. And "new girl", she's 45!

I'm so glad I haven't gone.

I want to go to that Laurie. You should go up on stage with a fishing rod and do some splendid pole dancing while singing really really loudly.

I'm lucky in that I hate 'groups' as a general rule but the ones I have joined have been nothing but lovely to newbies. (This is not a vain attempt to get a welcome, I'm a newbie here, and didn't say hello)

I think it depends on how long the group's been running and who runs it, fortunately in the 3 groups I attend, the 'leaders' have been very big on quiet, unembarassing welcomes to everyone, new or old.

I 100% agree people need to be taught. My mum always told me it was like a game of tennis; you have the ball (i.e you say something briefly about yourself) and then you put the ball back in the other person's side of the court (asking them about themselves) and vice versa.

Sybil maybe something hasn't changed. I just assumed it had because people of my parent's generation all have these skills, or so it seems. But maybe it did just come to them as they got older.

Finally, this group that I go to is full of very middle class people. That's part of what I find so strange (that and the fact that they are all very educated). You would have thought that to get where they have in life with their jobs, husbands, they should have these basic skills!

I'm really astonished so many people have had similar experiences. I've always worried it's just me, because this has been a regular experience throughout my life. It's been really good for me to read all your responses, so thank you.

"Feeling self-conscious is just that ... being conscious of yourself, rather than of others. Very selfish."

If you had the first clue what it was like feeling self-conscious in every social situation, you would be playing a different tune, trust me.
"Selfish", indeed.

Can't stand cliques though. The baby group in my (tiny, backwater) village is massively cliquey, and all women much older than me. Luckily, there is a lovely helper who saw me hovering and not being spoken to, and came to befriend me. I don't go when she's not there as none of the other mums talk to me

tempting Hully but no.

That would be brilliant Hully. Definitely a yes to the pole dancing. Might try that out at my craft group just to break the ice a bit.

"They are all intelligent, university educated, mostly married, kind people. And yet every single time I go I get very brief hello's from all of them but no one ever says 'how are you' or asks the new people in the group their names or introduces themselves"

What on earth does the university education have to do with it?! People with a degree should therefore have better social skills? Not in my experience anyway.

Hello Aldiwhore, welcome

That's not what I meant. I was thinking along the lines that if you've been to uni you've maybe had to do an interview to get in, or do group work with other students that require social skills, oral presentations, that sort of thing. Plus you've been thrown together with a big group of strangers and have to work at saying hello to one another and getting to know eachother.

I'm absolutely NOT implying that people with a degree have better social skills. Just that if you have been to uni I guess I assume certain skills have to have been picked up along the way. Sorry to offend. Of course you can pick up those skills in a zillion other ways. Actually, what made me write that was the fact that one girl very loudly states each week that she's been to Oxford; it has to come up in the conversation, so perhaps I link that with her rudeness in my mind. As in 'if you're clever how are you so very pants at basic social niceties?' (now it looks like I'm being rude to Oxford graduates! I'm not, I went to Oxbridge)

I don't know really.....not sure it is reasonable to label it rudeness. I am not a particularly extrovert person and whilst I would smile and acknowledge people wouldn't go out of my way to initiate conversation, although I will always chat happily to someone else if they initiate it. I think deep down I fear being blanked so wait for them to make the first friendly conversational move.

Yes, hello aldiwhore, welcome, how are you?

But aren't most people shy to some degree hmc? I know there are some people with incredible confidence but most people I've chatted to in life at some point admit to feeling shy and finding social situations hard. Surely if everyone is too shy to talk, that's when the situation arises that no one says chats and it does, collectively, seem rude.
If you initiate conversation, a) it puts the ball in the other person's court so you don't have to talk about yourself. They are the ones doing the work. And b)you might hugely help someone else who is feeling crippled by anxiety, especially if they are new.

you find this woith school mums too, you make the effort and start the conversations etc and they are usually friendly and wanting to chat etc.

but they dont innativate it alot of times

i have no idea why not

Your mother's tennis analogy is an excellent one, OP.

I don't know which is worse - the conversation hogs or the shrinking violets. Play the ball, dammit!

I think some people have the atittude that their lives are too busy for making new friends, and they purposefully avoid that. In fact, I have heard people saying that they already have enough friends (which I think is a terribly sad attitude towards life).

I also wonder now if the atittude is that once you are married and/or have children, you are set up with a partner and there is no need to make much of an effort to be friendly and sociable?

I've met some people who behaved exactly like the way the OP mentions. I was at a party recently, fortunately with 2 friends, and we tried and tried to make conversation with some of the other groups of people there, to little avail. There is only so much small talk you can make by way of asking a person polite questions and general comment and only getting yes or no answers and nothing back you can take! I've also had the turning of a back on me once I'd finished trying to speak thing.

I do think its a British thing, its not so bad abroad and I also detect differences in different parts of Scotland! Aberdeen for example is just absolutely awful whereas many places are very friendly indeed.

I agree with Sybil, I don't think this is a generational thing.

Here's my anecdotal evidence: I am part of a local book group and everyone is really friendly to newcomers. We are all Gen Y (if you subscribe to that pigeonhole bollox).

I think people get complacent and happy in their little bubble and are sometimes reluctant to meet new people. I know I have felt this way and I am a very sociable person.

I really felt my lack of social training when I went off to drama school....all the others bar two had been in private schools and they were so at ease with adults and with one another..

I still look at people sometimes and wonder what they're talking about! I try...but I fear I bore at times.

It bothers me when people say that this generation is not as polite/friendly/resourceful/insertwhatever as the last. It makes the past sound like a distant utopia. It wasn't! People have really not changed that much over the centuries. We are still teaching our children the same things.

Maybe it's more to do with group mentality than this generation. If your craft group has fallen into the habit of not welcoming newcomers maybe they need a bit of a shake up. Can you stage a mutiny?

I think its a skill that needs developing certainly, but there does seem to be little in the way of people to 'teach' good social skills and manners in weird situations. I'm lucky that although extremely self conscious and rather hermit-like (hermitesque?) I give a good appearance of confidence.

If I joined a small group and got no welcome, I'd be unlikely to return, and I find that rather sad. Manners cost nowt.

I must admit I find it weird that people who wish to belong to a 'group' wouldn't welcome others, surely thats a large reason of why people are in groups?

whoever said some people are scared of being seen as nice is right

esp in the work place

they WANT to be seen as stand offish

aldi - some people 'hide' in groups, I think. They wait for someone else to make the effort/take the lead.

I'm not from the UK and I am often amused at group situations where unless people are introduced they pretend they have not even seen each other! I think it's a rather British trait? Once they are introduced everything is fine and they chat away.