- holding doors open This still bother me when people don't do it. Or rather, I understand it's not custom and it's not being purposely rude when people don't, but it still pisses me off if someone drops the door in my face.
- smiling when you make eye contact with a random person for no particular reason That always weirded me out in the US.
- saying "hello" when you see or pass by a random person/neighbor This, too. Maybe I'm just uptight, I don't know.
- using words like "honey", "sweetie", "dear" with people to be friendly And this DRIVES ME UP THE WALL. I absolutely can't STAND it when someone I don't know uses pet names or something like that with me. It makes me want to PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE.
it's not an East Coast/NYC thing (unless, like me, you live in a majority African-American neighborhood, where the norms are more Southern).
I've gotten used to it and now I like saying hi to my neighbors and giving friendly smiles to random strangers, but it used to kind of drive me insane. And I still can't bring myself to call people baby or sweetie or whatever (but that's OK, they just do it for themselves).
I like that people smile at you instead of averting their eyes or avoiding eye contact or staring! Surely that's the best alternative, as long as it's not done creepily.
And I know the pet names irritate some people, and it's not always okay, but I prefer that kind of friendliness over overdone politeness/forced politeness like in Japan.
I like it now, too, but it took me a while to get used to it. It's not the norm for NYC (though it is for my neighborhood, Bed-Stuy, and in general, Brooklyn, though not all of it) and it was definitely not the norm where I grew up (SW CT). There you only said Hi to people if you knew them. Though it was a small town, so you mostly did.
People do all that stuff here too, if they're over 40 anyway. Age and gender of the person influence whether I'm bothered by the pet names or not. Middle aged men in particular piss me off when they do it; it feels condescending regardless of intent.
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This still bother me when people don't do it. Or rather, I understand it's not custom and it's not being purposely rude when people don't, but it still pisses me off if someone drops the door in my face.
- smiling when you make eye contact with a random person for no particular reason
That always weirded me out in the US.
- saying "hello" when you see or pass by a random person/neighbor
This, too. Maybe I'm just uptight, I don't know.
- using words like "honey", "sweetie", "dear" with people to be friendly
And this DRIVES ME UP THE WALL. I absolutely can't STAND it when someone I don't know uses pet names or something like that with me. It makes me want to PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE.
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I've gotten used to it and now I like saying hi to my neighbors and giving friendly smiles to random strangers, but it used to kind of drive me insane. And I still can't bring myself to call people baby or sweetie or whatever (but that's OK, they just do it for themselves).
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And I know the pet names irritate some people, and it's not always okay, but I prefer that kind of friendliness over overdone politeness/forced politeness like in Japan.
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