...you should show some sort of sympathy first, BEFORE changing the subject to talk about yourself?
My colleague told me the other day that her grandmother had just died. Before I could even utter a word of sympathy a guy who was standing with us blurted out 'My grandmother's been ill for ages...' and then proceeded to talk to us for several minutes and in great detail, about his own grandmother's illness, how it affected him and his family, etc. Then he walked off.
Please tell me I am not the only one who thinks this is extraordinarily, interminably, disgustingly rude. At the very least, if this fellow simply had to talk about himself, he could have started off by saying 'I'm really sorry to hear about your gran'. Is this really too much to ask? I know death's a difficult subject to cope with and that some people manage it with more difficulty than others, but (frankly I am boiling so much that I can't find any eloquent words to communicate my disgust so here goes) blardy hell!