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Roger Rabbits with |
Whatever happened to ‘thank you’? Remember ‘thank you’? The go-to, chatty, expression of gratitude. The courtesy thing.
Seemed to work for a long time…Until it didn’t. Whenever someone showed you kindness, gave a gift, loaned a buck, lent a hand, paid a compliment, said something nice, you said ‘thank you’. Grazie! Danke! Arigatou! Kia ora!
‘Thank you’ was powerful; effective. “Wrap it with a smile” Nana Billie always suggested. “Then stand back and watch ‘thank you’ work for you.”
Like Clyde Barrow. Before he died in a hail of FBI fire power, the gangster wrote a nice ‘thank you’ note to Henry Ford for manufacturing a “dandy” V8 car for fleeing crime scenes. See! You can be a cold-blooded, murderous, bank robbing swine and still say ‘thank you’. Okay – it didn’t work long-term for the mobster and his moll. But the sentiment, the gratitude, the ‘thank you’ was there.
‘Thank you’
I wonder if Henry used Barrow’s endorsement as a sales pitch – ‘Thank you for choosing Ford Clyde Barrow’. Afterall, one thank you deserves another. Or ‘Gangsters drive Ford’ or ‘Live dangerously, drive luxuriously’. Or even ‘Good for a gangster getaway, good for a weekend getaway’. Endless possibilities. Ford sold 19 million cars in his lifetime so he should have said ‘thank you’, in part, to Barrow.
Another famous ‘thank you’ happened when Nelson Mandela left prison after 27 years and wrote ‘thank you’ to his captors because he didn’t want to spend his days, bitter, angry and upset at them for the injustice he had suffered. Nice gesture, nice guy.
Wonder if they wrote back saying: ‘No – Thank you!’
And 25 years after his “giant leap for mankind”, Neil Armstrong sent a nice ‘thank you’ to the techs who built him a “cuddly” spacesuit. Twenty-five years! Never too late for a ‘thank you’.
‘Thank you’
But the Oscar goes to a very theatrical ‘thank you’ on a pedestrian crossing when I pulled up to wave three college student across. They got to the middle when one swivelled and performed a long, slow, exaggerated curtsey, which then evolved into a kapa haka-type sweeping arm action, complete with twinkling fingers, and pūkana and Whētero – the wide eyes and protruding tongue. Then they all mouthed ‘thank you’, and fell about at their own antics. Ten points each for artistic merit, difficulty and execution. What a joy. Thank you for the ‘thank you’.
It was drummed into us as kids. “A ‘please’ and a ‘thank cost’ nothing, but forgetting the magic words can cost everything.” Seemed a bit excessive at the time. Her Majesty would ask if I had said ‘thank you’ to whoever for whatever. If not, I was sent back to do it. She did not want to be raising an ungrateful wee snot! Whether she succeeded is debatable. And the dinner table was a chorus of pleases and thank yous. Even if you hated cauliflower cheese – wallpaper paste – the chef still had to be thanked. ‘Merci Mum’…Then I gagged.
‘Thank you’
All this because a colleague was loudly lamenting the passing of unfashionable ‘thank you’. He’d opened a door for a woman and the gesture fell flat. “I wasn’t expecting a medal for my gallantry, but a ‘thank you’ would have been nice.”
Women don’t expect men to open doors for them anymore – outdated, theatrical, excessive. A female suggested it wasn’t about ‘please and thank you’, rather equality. “Would you have done the same for a man? Because opening a door for women can suggest to they’re regarded lesser or weaker.” “‘Thank you’ for that,” he replied graciously.
Isn’t it a common courtesy. Regardless of gender.
‘Thank you’
In the retail industry it seems ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ have been dropped from the transaction and replaced with a meaningless ‘today’ – as in ‘that will be $25.90 today?’ Why replace a perfect ‘thank you’ with a nonsense ‘today’?
It seems ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are casualties of a faster, clinical, digital communication. No room in emails and texts for niceness. It just clutters things. Economy of words apparently. No space for the heartfelt and personal. The ‘thank you’ is tacit.
Well, ‘thank you’ still works for me. Like when I let a car “merge like a zip”.
“Nek minnit” the hazard lights flash and a big fist is pumping a ‘thank you’ from the driver’s window in appreciation. Gratefully received. A ‘thank you’ makes us feel good, given or received. I read “it’s a powerful social tool that acts as a reward for the brain, strengthens social bonds and increases feelings of appreciation, self-worth, and happiness”.
All that in a ‘thank you’.
‘Thank you’
But there was none of the above outside my sad squat where there’s a narrow carriageway because of cars parked on either side. It demands patience and politeness. I signal motorists coming the other way to proceed while I wait. It’s an experiment – will they acknowledge my goodwill. But they never, ever do. Not so much as a wave, flash of lights or a mouthed ‘thank you’. I indicated my displeasure to one by mouthing a smart-arsed ‘thank you’ when an ungracious driver drew alongside. She just flicked me a bird and told me to ‘f*** off’.
‘Thank you’ for that.
Didn’t she know a ‘thank you’ is key to creating a positive, collaborative environment. “And say ‘thank you’, because silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone.” Thank you for the quote, G.B Stern.