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How should I change my polite behavior to be more accommodating? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 6 months ago by clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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My parents raised me to always say "yes sir" and "no ma'am", and I automatically say it to service workers and just about anyone with whom I'm not close that I interact with. I noticed recently that I had misgendered a cashier when saying something like "no thank you, ma'am" based on their appearing AFAB, but on a future visit to the store they had added their pronouns (they) to their name tag. I would feel bad if their interaction with me was something they will remember when feeling down. This particular person has a fairly androgynous haircut/look and wears a store uniform, so there's no gender clue there.

I am thinking I need to just stop saying "sir" and "ma'am" altogether, but I like the politeness and I don't know how I would replace it in a gender-neutral way. Is there anything better than just dropping it entirely?

For background I'm a millennial and more than happy to use people's correct pronouns if I know them!

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[–] davel@lemmy.ml 25 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I don’t know where you grew up, but this sounds like “southern hospitality.” I’m a gen-x New Englander, and it always creeped me out because I suspected it originated from slavery, and it seems I was right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_hospitality

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 9 points 6 months ago

Sir and ma'am are so far divorced from any of that as to be absurd.

Nor is polite formality a purely southern thing at all. People up north used to teach their kids to sir and ma'am their teachers too.

[–] 200ok@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I can relate! Thank you for helping put a reason behind the ick I was instinctively feeling!!

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago

I don’t think that kind of thing is unique to the South nor its link to slavery. In a larger scope, it’s a deference to class hierarchy. George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, talking about his experience in socialist Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War:

Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Señor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou’, and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenos días’. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy.