Because I said so
On curiosity, compliance, and why I'm still arguing about butter
I can’t be more clear: I love and respect curiosity. It’s why I’m obsessed with detective stories (like legit gloomy British ones1 and not “The Case of the Cat and the Missing Croissant”) and why I love talking to people and hearing their stories. While I never raised toddlers, thus missing the “why?” phase that annoys so many, I have seen it with extraordinarily smart and curious nieces and nephews and had to answer a number of logistical questions about Santa that I was not prepared for.
In the workplace, I have always loved and valued employees who demonstrate curiosity — there’s really nothing more fun than getting to manage someone who not only does a great job but asks the right questions to do it even better. Although — and this is probably a whole other essay — I am 100% confident that we overuse the response “great question” and it’s leading to a lot of mediocre question-askers thinking they’re Columbo.
And while I respect those who raise their hands and ask questions tremendously, honestly even the ones asking mediocre questions, there are times where I do wonder if sometimes asking questions and/or requiring further explanation is just an act of compliance-resistance wearing the costume of intellectual curiosity.
In one role, I led a team of truly brilliant, largely early-in-career, talent who worked hard and certainly could have been paid more at an institution doing better financially. All but a couple of those people were hired after offices had been established and accepted a job that clearly stated if you were within a certain radius, it was a mandatory three days a week in the office. And, yet, more than half of the team rarely came in more than once a week.
To be clear, this was not a poorly rolled out RTO mandate, something I’ve also been asked to champion/enforce in a past role, but rather people who accepted jobs with an in-office component and just didn’t come in. I was not within the radius and I’m a huge proponent of working remotely in most cases so I didn’t put much effort into cracking down on this but about once a month it would come up again that an office that should have no empty desks was half empty on a Wednesday.
Incidentally, the fact that the office was too small was a reason why one or two very honest people didn’t come in — they came to me to talk about headaches and distractions and inability to find a space to work that was quiet enough to get the job done. Most others just had a lot of “furniture deliveries” or frequent Covid exposure or appointments/job interviews. Outside of a meeting where it came up again, someone, clearly tapped by the rest of the team as the sacrificial lamb, came to me and said “people want to know if they’ll be fired if they don’t come in.”
Obviously I understand no one wanted to, that coming into an expensive city and having to pay for parking and potentially a not cheap lunch, all so that you can be distracted and get a free protein bar is not something that was popular. And yet, all of these adults accepted a job with this requirement and were now arguing with it and asking me to provide logic for a decision that was already firmly established as policy by the time I joined.
At home, a similar debate comes up a lot around manners where the need to provide rationale for what I thought was accepted societal behavior is required when I make a suggestion or request. I married into a family of all well-behaved and respectful people but some of the things I thought were basics (like greeting people warmly, making small talk, sending thank you notes, most - if not all - table manners, etc) were just not part of the family culture — why write a note if you already said “thank you” in person? Outside of Oldest becoming a world-class thank you note writer, in most cases we either made light progress or I stopped trying/caring.
Etiquette was a foundational part of my childhood conditioning — we were all told we needed to graduate from “Granny’s School” (i.e. have manners of which my mom’s mother would approve). As of the time of my mother’s death, I believe I was the only confirmed graduate in my family since one brother 100% failed out and the other’s graduation status was shaky at best. That desire to graduate “Granny’s School” or just be known as someone with great manners means absolutely nothing to two of my kids today. My attempt to explain that the goal of manners is actually to make sure everyone feels comfortable in all situations fell flat the minute I was suggesting they might need to do something different to accommodate the group.
One of the constant examples is feet on the coffee table. I, personally, think feet on surfaces where food or beverages are placed is gross. Middle, however, has some sort of magnet situation where his feet are physically drawn to the coffee table. I’ve asked that they be removed. He says “I’m comfortable.” I say “I’m not, we eat or drink off that table and you wouldn’t do the same to the dining room table.” He says “I would if there was nowhere else to put my feet up.” I point him to another chair that has an ottoman. He claims to prefer the couch.
Eventually I say, “in my home, we don’t put feet on coffee tables, if you want people to do that in your house, that’s up to you.” It all feels about one step away from “because I said so” but yet I find myself completely confounded by the exchange. Why is there even a discussion, let alone an argument, past “please take your feet off the coffee table?” Somehow I find myself feeling like a fool for asking that someone respect my space and my things all because I can’t come back with a more bulletproof argument.
The moment when I realized the reasons don’t even matter was while out to dinner at what would be our “fancy” meal of a vacation. I really do limit myself to one table manner prompt per meal at most but have never regretted it more than this time when I noted that appropriate etiquette for butter is to each take some from the communal dish and put it straight on your plate rather than to wait for each person to butter their bread. Middle went straight to argument mode pointing out that it was easier for him to just butter his own bread first. My (I thought great and thorough) response was:
Everyone gets butter faster if you put it straight on your own plate, so it’s faster for the full table
It is accommodating of anyone with bread/gluten allergies who would not be able to share the butter if a knife that had touched bread had already touched it
Because of both of the above, it’s also more considerate of others and makes you look more thoughtful in general
None of this was enough to convince Middle who, last time I observed (but due to PTSD from this experience said nothing) still buttered his bread directly. Youngest remembers most of the time and Oldest doesn’t eat butter so the point is moot. All I wanted to share was something that, I thought, would be helpful to my kids as they go out into the world on their own and provided good reasons only for it not to matter.
Most of the time I’ve attributed all of this to a combination of not getting custody of kids until they were teenagers and already had established expectations combined with neurodivergence. And maybe that’s part of it. But I’ve started to wonder how much is generational or temporal — or whether it’s not even that, but just what happens when authority loses enough credibility across enough institutions that everyone, reasonably, stops extending it the benefit of the doubt. Including to people who just want feet off of their coffee table.
Which leaves the rest of us cycling between two responses: the frustrated one (just go to the fucking office you agreed to go to when you took the job) and the slightly more generous one (okay, but why did we let it get here???). I take some comfort in knowing my mother didn’t imprint Emily Post on all her kids either. Clearly I won’t be the one to crack the code.
Related Posts:
Not relevant to any of the post beyond my detective aside, but did want to share this graphic I saw circulating on the interwebs, which lovers of detective stories throughout Europe will appreciate:
