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Original poster

To think this behaviour is more annoying than polite?

55 replies

expatinspain · 10/08/2019 11:23

I have a friend whose behaviour regarding hosting I find quite strange. When we go to her house she literally tries to ply us with food and drink. Obviously it's polite to offer people food and drink when they're at your house, but with her it's constant.

You accept a drink and a snack and the second you finish she's offering another. You politely decline and she constantly offers. Even if you've had say four biscuits, she's pulling more packs out and telling you that you must try these and these abc then something else. It's relentless!! With alcohol she's a nightmare. She barely drinks and after a couple of drinks you say 'no I'm ok' and if you go to the loo she pours you another anyway. She does the same when out, orders you another glass when you go to the loo and pays for it, even though you've had enough and she's barely drinking.

DP was doing some work in her house for her and he was busy fixing blinds, plastering holes etc and in the space of four hours she offered him a drink more than 20 times!! He had one when he arrived and after many offers quite firmly said he was busy, but that he's have one when he finished and she kept on and on Confused.

Am I being a bit mean finding this annoying? Do you think she's just trying to be a good host? It doesn't matter how firmly you say no, it's like an onslaught!!

OP posts:
HopelessLayout · 10/08/2019 16:09

Simple solution: don't eat or drink it.
If you clean your plate she will think you want more.
The Queen always leaves something on her plate for this reason. So I've heard. :-)

hairyturkey · 10/08/2019 16:15

I've a friend who does this, she has an eating disorder. I wonder whether it makes her feel good to see others eating?!

ginghamtablecloths · 10/08/2019 16:38

Has she got a short attention span with other things? I agree it's annoying. It must be very difficult not to get exasperated with it.

It sounds like anxiety - perhaps a gentle reminder that she's asked twenty times and that's enough now. Could you change the subject when she asks?

SperanzaWilde · 10/08/2019 16:50

This is my mother. It's because she was brought up to think that refusing offers of food or drink several times is 'polite', and that you need to put up a show of not wanting it and almost being forced into it by your host making you feel you have to accept after several intensive rounds of offers and rejections.

Which means she thinks that everyone has signed up to this crazy system -- she thinks that someone who says 'No, thanks, I've just had a four-course dinner' or 'I'm on a diet, so no cake, please', 'I'm not one for hot drinks, a glass of water is fine' or 'I can't stay for a cup of tea, I'm on my way to work/the theatre/to catch a train' is just 'being polite' so that the genuinely polite thing to do is to completely ignore their protests and present them with a large meal/the cup of tea they're refused five times/the cream cake they can't eat because of their diet etc.

Plus she would then think they were being rude if they stared at her in puzzlement and said 'But I said I didn't want any...'

It's absolutely awful to watch, and has caused other people genuine awkwardness and embarrassment. Though it's unwittingly hilarious if she encounters a direct person who offers tea which my mother declines in the implicit expectation it will keep being re-offered, who then takes her at her word and doesn't offer again.

Nonstopbuttmachine · 10/08/2019 17:08

My ex FIL (Irish) was like this.

Would you like a cup of tea? (I hate tea)
Would you like a biscuit?
Would you like some cake?
Would you like a cigarette? Confused
Would you like a pie?

He eventually realised I didn't like tea and proudly handed me a cup of Mellow Birds one day 🤮 God rest his soul.

I've had a workman in today, it's 35c here so I kept offering him cold water which he gratefully accepted. I may have crossed a line though offering him a Lidl white chocolate strawberry crisp Magnum-type ice cream, he looked really embarrassed and refused Blush

RelaisBlu · 10/08/2019 17:11

SperanzaWilde I think I must have had your mother at my house once!
A neighbour came in for tea when we were new here and I put some cakes in front of her, inviting her to take one. She declined the cakes twice (so I came to the conclusion she really didn't want one) and my children kept running in & out and taking one so the number dwindled.... then my husband breezed in from the garden after hard labour and cheerfully ate the last two, saying "Umm these are lovely aren't they?", smiling at her - she replied, glaring back angrily, "I don't know I haven't had a chance to try one." Shock She left soon after and DH & I were completely baffled - maybe like your mother she was waiting to be asked again??

courderoy · 10/08/2019 17:23

My MIL is a sugar pusher. Will you have a doughnut, oh go on have a doughnut, are you sure you don’t want a doughnut... and that is just going to Tesco. She does it to me and the kids and DH (who are less resistant). Of course I don’t mind her treating them but it is the way she does it that drives me mad - if a ten year old has said they don’t want a doughnut they definitely don’t want it!

Its not just doughnuts but it is always very sweet things and she usually doesn’t have any herself.

FIL had type 2 diabetes and died at 69.

pigsDOfly · 10/08/2019 17:30

Yes, it's very annoying but so was the woman who invited me over for coffee a while ago and before we sat down with our coffee open a biscuit tin, held it towards me and said, 'would you like to take a biscuit?'

And that was all I got, one biscuit.

hashtagthathappened · 10/08/2019 17:35

I find it very stressful tbh.

There is a video based around consent using tea as an example.

Dieu · 10/08/2019 17:35

They must either be Irish or Glaswegian!

pottedshrimps · 10/08/2019 18:11

My pils used to be like this apart from the stuff they'd offer would be horrible out of date, dubiously stored food 🤢 sauce with crusts around the edge, fluffy marmalade and tinned sardines from 1962 etc. This was normal for them and I don't know how they survived so long as dh was always ill after we'd visited. I just lived on dry toast when I was there. Xmas was interesting 😱

autumnkate · 10/08/2019 19:02

Honestly you are describing most of my relatives. Is she Irish?

SperanzaWilde · 10/08/2019 19:15

@RelaisBlu, apart from the fact that my mother is meek, inoffensive and scared of people, and would never have dared to snap that she hadn't had a chance to try the cakes, yes that sounds about right.

You didn't offer enough times for politeness, according to this philosophy, which meant your neighbour would have looked 'forward' and over-eager in accepting a cake after 'only' being asked twice.

It would have been OK for her to accept after one more/two more/five/fifty more offers (who knows?), or possibly you should have ignored her protests and put a cake on her plate, but of course, no one sent you the memo about the Secret Cultural/Generational/Gendered Codes of Accepting.

Plus, my mother would have thought it was 'forward' of the children to take the cakes off the table in front of a guest, even if said guest had been offered the cakes twice before the children started having any, and was at liberty to help herself at any point. And as for taking the last ones (though for my mother, the Rules Are Different For Men...) Grin

As you may imagine, it took a certain amount of self-discipline to grow away from this philosophy in my teens and to become, as an adult, someone who can reply to an offer of a hot drink with 'Oh, I'd love a coffee, thanks', as my mother looks on in embarrassment at the coarse manners of her daughter...

And yes, it is exhausting to be around.

Cherrysoup · 10/08/2019 19:28

I was thinking of my dad who would refuse breakfast, lunch and dinner (painful shyness, autistic, embarrassed) so I'd just make extra toast and plonk it with jam etc I n front of him. He'd eat it.Then he'd refuse lunch, so I'd make a massive sandwich and just give it to him. He'd eat it. I could have accepted his refusal, but then he'd starve!

KennDodd · 10/08/2019 19:37

I went to stay with a friend at her sister's house once (I didn't know the sister) sister kept offering to make cups of tea, I would always refuse, 'no thank you I'm fine' (I hate tea) tea was made for me anyway. I didn't drink it and would try to get rid of it someway without her seeing. I told her I don't like tea and don't drink it each time it was offered. Near the end of the weekend I was (again) made a cup of tea and told in no uncertain terms that I was bloodly going to drink it, that I'd been made loads of cups of tea and hadn't drank a single one. I drink the tea while she stood over me.

Branster · 10/08/2019 19:43

It’s a thing in other cultures, but I guest that’s not the case here.

KennDodd · 10/08/2019 19:52

I have a friend a bit like this except it's worse because she always offers my children loads of sweets, cakes and biscuits. I do my very best to refuse but she insists. She's Arabic and I think it's a cultural thing. She's lovely but I really wish she wouldn't do it.

I think in Chinese and Arabic cultures it's rude to accept something on the first offer, I think it's only after the third time of offering can food or drink be accepted. Or maybe I just made that up and it's not true.

RelaisBlu · 10/08/2019 20:22

SperanzaWildeYou've now made me realise the neighbour was probably also appalled at DH being sweaty & naked from the waist up, as he munched the last 2 cakes right in front of her Grin. The thing is he knew she'd been there for an hour by then so quite reasonably assumed he could have whatever was left as everyone else had had theirs!

ChristmasFluff · 10/08/2019 20:56

OMG, this is me :-( I learned at my mother's knee, and I know it is mad, but I can't stop.

I've sort of come to a realisation, so I'll be like, 'have a cake, oh, OK, I'll just leave it there.' 'But I'm putting on a couple of bacon sandwiches (I'm veggie, son isn't) help yourselves or not'. 'And here's the tea and the coffee and the digestives and the Nice biscuits and the Amaretto biscuits. Oh, and the Eton mess and a trifle'

I know it's crazy, but the idea of a good hostess is so ingrained.

Thecurtainsofdestiny · 10/08/2019 21:54

I used to be like this, after living many years in cultures where this was polite hosting.

Took ages to adjust back to UK way of doing things!

Thankfully most of my guests have been very patient...

wishihadagoodone · 10/08/2019 21:57

In my old job, I used to do home visits to one of my clients and her mum was like this.
They lived quite rurally and when you arrived, you were bombarded with tea, cake, biscuits, sandwiches etc
It was sweet to begin with but I was there to do a job and my visits often took much longer due to interruptions and having to eat and drink something to pacify her. If I ignored the tea she poured to get some work done, she would bustle in and exclaim "oh your tea must be cold, you haven't had a chance to drink it! I'll get you a fresh cup!!"
It was made worse when I was pregnant and they kept plying me with liquids and there was nowhere between their house and the nearest village to use the loo!
My client told me one day that I was lucky I could eat because her sw (who also did frequent home visits for support) was coeliac and couldn't eat any of her mums offerings. I had a sneaky suspicion that her sw wasn't actually coeliac and had said it to get around being force-fed every visit! I was raging I hadn't thought of it first 😂

Dieu · 10/08/2019 22:15

@Nonstopbuttmachine

It was so lovely of you to offer the ice-lolly (and I bet he thought so too) ... I'd have bitten your hand off, as it sounds divine Grin
I gave ice-lollies to a couple of homeless guys the other day, as it was very hot. They looked slightly bewildered but ate them anyway!

Original poster
expatinspain · 11/08/2019 14:55

Honestly you are describing most of my relatives. Is she Irish? She's English!

OP posts:
hashtagthathappened · 11/08/2019 15:35

People always insist it’s an Irish thing. It’s not. It’s a rude and annoying thing.

fedup21 · 11/08/2019 15:36

I don’t know anyone that does that-it sounds bizarre?!

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