That thing where you think you're being polite but really it's just a bit mad

[Nabootique]

I am in the office just thinking about going to the canteen to get breakfast. I can't order what I want as the very nice young man who works the counter prides himself on getting my "usual" on the go as soon as he sees me approach the door. As a result, I have the same thing every day and don't have the heart to tell him I'd like to order something different.

I feel like this mad level of politeness is probably very common. Any funny stories?

The 'Richard' comment is hilarious.

I remember howling at that one on the other thread.

Someone up thread mentioned a comment in another thread when someone said they had a dog, but actually didn't. Their colleague texted them to arrange to 'go over the moors' at the weekend : she was totally bamboozled!

You're unhinged @ unhinged

I am still giggling at page's assertion that she is not completely mad
Brilliant thread

I just cringe at the thought of the restaurant employees saying oh look - Rachel has got engaged, now she's married, oh had a baby....

The awful bit is I received all my cards from her but she never mentioned the lack of reciprocation!

I bet the people in Pizza Express will be devastated to miss out on her child's birthday cards from now on too

I was sat on a bench in town once with my 3 under 5's and an old lady came and sat next to us.

We chatted for a little while and then she noticed that I wasn't wearing a wedding ring and commentated on how hard it must be to be bringing up the 3 on my own and how she has nothing but respect for single mothers.

She told me that her husband had been cruel and that she should have got away but women couldn't in her day.

I hadn't the heart to tell her that DH and I were actually happily married so I agreed that I was better off without him.

Then I saw him walking out from the bank and heading towards us and I scooted off down the street pretending not to know him.

I was out for a walk when my first DC was about 6m. Two women walk past, and one of them stops and grins at me.
"Hey!" she says. "How ARE you?"
"Fine," I reply, thinking, fuck, Do I know this woman?
"It's so good to see you!" She says warmly, then turns to her mate. "This is my friend Helena! We used to work together!"
I am not called Helena and I did not uae to work with this woman. But I smile and nod and act in a Helena-like manner.
I have seen this woman often since, and she always thinks I'm Helena. This has been going on for 10 years.

Why is this thread called the "Pineapple of Politeness" on Discussions of the Day? I can't find anything about a pineapple.

I go to the library a lot. One of the librarians greeted me, one day, saying "Hello, Sonia".

My name is not Sonia. It doesn't even sound anything like it, but I didn't correct her that first time.

Every time I went in there from then on, I just pretended to be called Sonia. Then one day I had a problem with my library card, she looked down at the name on my card, and I had to admit I wasn't actually called Sonia at all.

Another one, a caretaker at work thought I was called Simone (again, I just went along with it, my name sounds nothing like Simone). I eventually had to own up when his wife started working there, and wondered why her husband was calling me by some random name!

Lastly, I used to do the collections, at work, when people were leaving.
Once I got a bloke some chocolate, iced with a personal message, from Thorntons. It had something like, "We'll miss you, Gordon" iced across it....As he was leaving he admitted that he was known by his middle name usually by everyone outside of work. It was just that he was too shy to say anything as he was being introduced on the first day, so had just gone along with it....I think name ones are quite common.

DH has form for this.

For context, DH is SAHP so usually does all child-related stuff during the week and has both of our boys.

We used to send DS1 to a childminder. DH has a younger DB who works at a chain (let's say Pizza Express). BIL gave DH a branded staff t-shirt. One day DH was leaving to do pick up and put this t-shirt on as it was clean and to hand. He wasn't wearing a jacket. So he gets to the CM's place and she asks if he works at Pizza Express as the t-shirt says 'staff'. Naturally his response is 'yes'. When she asks what he does he could have used that moment to backtrack and say, "Oh, sorry, I thought you said (something), it's my DB who works here". Instead he said 'I work on the ovens'. There is a branch not far from us so she asks if he works there, and he says 'Yes'... and so on. So my DH has gone from being at home with the DCs, to working on the ovens at the local Pizza Express After that point she kept asking him how work was and if they'd see him there and he just kept it going. Fortunately for him we removed DS1 from her setting after a few months so he didn't have to keep it up for too long...

My DM got her knee firmly wedged in a railing in Disney land LA. Being too embarrassed to seek help she leaned on it as though admiring cinderellas castle whilst my father pretended go be tying his shoe lace between shoves. It took ten minutes to free her. She was quite panicked by the ebd of it

DH meanwhile spent twelve months calling our neighbours new live in partner Dave. We had several arguments where I told him it was Gary (names changed) but he would have none of it. Finally after Dave /Gary called in to borrow a tool from DH, after I heard the front door shut I pulled up his Facebook page and shouted to dh from the lounge "look, he's called bloody Gary!" Unfortunately for me Gary was still in the hallway....he did see the funny side. They split up a few weeks later. NDN is still single. This is probably easier.

One of my oldest friends sends me birthday and Christmas cards addressed to me as Mrs xxxx dhsurname. Except I haven't changed my name and the surname is spelt wrong (an acceptable variant)

It's been 19 years and I haven't dared tell her

Sisters... Oh my... I wonder what your DM would have done had she not been free'd? Pretend the railing was some sort of medical knee-brace... or perhaps that she was one of the new Suffragettes (Disney-branch)?

These are all just so funny... we need a 'bigger grin' emojii

I think it's time to tell the story of how DF very nearly committed lesé-majeste.
DF has always been known by his middle name, let's say it's Sean. His first name is (say) Robert, which obviously shortens to Bob.

DF gets a Garden Party invite, part of the burden of being on detachment at MOD. His Head of Branch, who has never met him until 15 minutes ago, introduces him to HM. Unfortunately, DF doesn't recognise his own first name, and turns his back to see where Bob is. There is a brief, freezing moment, while DF contemplates the Tower, until HM says something emollient, and DF and his boss sneak off early and get ratarsed in the Plumbers Arms.

On moving to our new house my neighbour told me that the local ice cream man was called Tony. He was lovely, and I'd be all "Hi Tony", "How's business Tony?". One day I noticed he had a name tag sewn onto his shirt - BILL ! I was mortified, he'd never said anything, and must have assumed I just liked giving people stereotypical names, as in all ice cream vendors must be of Italian heritage and called Tony !! I call him Bill now.

DH once opened the door at a friends house and the group of people outside stepped in. He assumed they knew our friend (she does have loads of people coming and going) and friend assumed they were friends if DH.

So they came in and had a cup of tea and made polite small talk for about 30 mins! They then asked for after Fred and it turned out they'd got the wrong door number and were expected at the neighbours up the road

My friend told me the story of when she and her then boyfriend moved into a flat together. They were very young, about 17/18. She is the sweetest person and wouldn't ever say anything to upset or offend anyone.

One day she answered a knock at the door to find her upstairs neighbour standing there holding out a large vibrator. He asked if she and her boyfriend would like to borrow it for a while. She was so stunned she just "oh yes, thanks very much" and took it from him.

She put it in a carrier bag and left it in the kitchen for a couple of weeks, then took it back upstairs and left it outside neighbour's door.

Nobody ever mentioned it ever again.

DH's extended family all think I'm a teacher I'm not but it's been 15 years so I just make sure I keep up to date with who the current education minister is so when they ask me questions I can sigh heavily and say "Nicky Morgan just doesn't have a clue"

There was also an incident at the opticians when he asked if it was my day off and I said no I'm on maternity leave (ds was probably about 2 at the time so no idea why i even said it) but he misunderstood and assumed I was expecting (thanks mate) so I spent the whole sight test answering questions about when baby was due, if it was a girl or a boy. I was then worried the next time I went he would ask about the new baby so had no choice but to change opticians.

Oh and then there was the time SIL was trying on a fake fur coat and I told her how lovely she looked and what a nice coat it was (she didn't, it wasn't) on christmas day I opened my present from DH only to find said fur coat. Which he had bought following being told by SIL how much I loved it in the shop.

I was on the train one day commuting to work(usually got a lift with a friend).

A woman on the train greeted me warmly and started asking about my current job. I had not a clue who she was, and I think after some minutes she realised she had the wrong person. But we soldiered on with the very general conversation until I said I had to turn "here" .
Never saw her again and no idea who she thought I was. All very British (although not in Britain!)

Why is this thread called the "Pineapple of Politeness" on Discussions of the Day?

Is it because it's a symbol of hospitality? I live in the Southern US and there are pineapple motifs all over the place.

"The pineapple of politeness" is from the play The Rivals. Mrs Malaprop, the character prone to substituting the wrong word to comic effect (and thus from where we get the word "malapropism") says it when she means "the pinnacle of politeness".

I love this thread.

Mine isn't really funny but dp (quite old) Aunty sends a Xmas card and birthday card for me every year. She always addresses it "Miss La Souza" My surname isn't La Souza, neither is dp's surname. We've tried correcting her but Xmas rolls around again and I get another card for "Miss La Souza"

This is not mine but my sisters story, she has a food allergy and was on holiday in a restaurant trying to speak to the waiter about what she could eat.
He was going back and forth between her and the kitchen and she was getting a bit embarrassed about making him run around.
He eventually said the kitchen have said that squid is ok for you to have so she accepted and assumed he meant calamari rings.

Well, out came the squid and it was indeed 2 massive whole squids on a plate, tentacles and all. She doesn't deal well with food with eyes and 8 legs so naturally thought it would be best to just shove the whole squids in her bag when nobody was looking and tell the waiter they were delicious

She had to throw the bag away because it smelt of squid.

Makes me laugh everything

A few years back my DH and I were having a meal in Portugal at a small family restaurant we'd tried once before and liked. We'd ordered steak but on this occasion it was really tough and I wasn't enjoying it at all but decided to eat the chips etc. because the restaurant owner was so nice and I didn't want to 'upset' him.

Unfortunately he noticed and was so upset that he whisked my plate away to exchange it - but I'd filled up on the chips by then and there was no way I wanted another steak. Sure enough, back came my plate - complete with not just a new steak but the whole meal again. The guy looked close to tears and I felt compelled to try and eat it. But the final straw was when the insane man he decided to run out of the kitchen with a massive fried egg and slap it on top of my steak!

This was the point that I almost started crying. I spent the next hour or more pleading with DH to eat it for me whilst smiling gratefully at the hovering close by lunatic who owned the restaurant.

Still have nightmares about that fried egg.

Years ago I decided to take an evening class in Drawing for Beginners - thought it might be quite a nice thing to do. On the evening of the first class, in I go, take a seat and wait for the teacher to start. He begins by saying "Welcome to Beginner's French for Travel".

I speak fluent French. I have two degrees in French. I lived in France for 10 years. I have worked as an interpreter. I can read classic French books in French. Basically, I can do French. So you'd think the obvious thing to do would be to say at that point "Oops, sorry, wrong classroom - can you point me in the direction of Drawing for Beginners?"

Of course I didn't do any of that, but stayed put for the two-hour class, pretending not to speak French and hesitating over every simple phrase like "Je m'appelle Lurking", complete with deliberate mistakes and a terrible Allo Allo type French accent. By the end of the two hours I was sweating buckets with the stress of NOT speaking French, my fellow classmates thought I was a loon and the teacher actually said something to the effect that he'd have his work cut out with me.

Naturally I never went to the rest of my Drawing for Beginners course either

lurking that is face-hurtingly hilarious!