The Grin and the Door

There are two American social behaviors that bother me and that happen several times a day.

The Grin. At a college, the halls are always full of people.  The halls in my building are very long.  On many occasions during the day I will start walking down the hall and see someone off in the distance.  As we walk towards each other realizing that we will pass each other, a strange discomfort begins to brew.  I look away into a door of a classroom.  They do likewise.  Then the moment of truth: the pass.  And when that occurs you have a choice: look straight ahead and not acknowledge the person, look down at your shoes as if there is a problem to examine, or look at the person you are passing.  If you do look at the person, then what?  It is almost automatic that we grin.  It's a meaningless grin.  We may also accompany it with a "Hi" or if we "know" the person on some level a "How are you?"

It seems that when we interact with people who are another presence, there is a certain unwritten obligation to acknowledge the other person's existence.  Not looking at the person does not recognize them and non-recognition is the heart of being rude.  When we ask how someone is, we don't really care and expect an acknowledgment of heath and good cheer.  If we truly cared and that stranger or mere acquaintance was having a rough row that day, we would not then be frustrated at the following obligation to discuss with them how horrible their life is at that moment.  So out of courtesy and to keep the social structure consistent – we grin.  A meaningless grin on the surface, but one that keeps things in order and of good cheer so that we can go about our business unfettered by such minor disruptions.

The Door. If you are entering a building or room where you know the door automatically closes behind you there is always a dilemma in a public place.  You open the door and automatically look behind you to see if anyone is coming.  If no one is coming it is often a relief.  If someone is following you within arm's length, you will hold the door so that it does not slam back at them.  But what if they are several arm's lengths behind you?  At what point is it acceptable to allow the door to close?  It is a hard bargain to make, especially after you have made eye contact with that person behind you.  When this happens, allowing the door to close right as they reach it seems rude.  But often you will hold the door causing a reaction from your follower.  They now feel obligated to quicken their pace and even jog to the door in order that you are not forced to stand there and wait.  This is then followed by…the grin and a "Thanks".

Holding a door for someone has a more pragmatic value than "the grin".  If we do not, it could actually cause harm if it slams shut on someone following us.  But it is the decision to hold it that forces the other person to run that is interesting.  Rather than help, it places a strange pressure of obligation on the follower to consent to your offer of grace.  If you do not help, you are rude.  If you do hold the door and force them to run, you are now placing an unneeded social obligation on them causing them to act rather unnaturally.  So holding the door, like the above, is not just about preventing a door from slamming shut on someone.  It is maintaining a social order that is of good cheer.

Often these are interactions that emerge without a pre-defined social structure or established boundaries and these behaviors establish these boundaries.  It is how we construct reality in idle space and time so that our experience coheres in a specific manner.  In these interactions it is to keep things of good cheer, to smooth out the ambiguity in the most palatable manner so that we do not offend those we encounter who disrupt our sense of space and time.  The very sensation of discomfort in these situations is evidence enough that our sense of space and time has been disrupted by the presence of the other person.  When idle space and time are disrupted by the presence of someone else, it demands that we construct that reality somehow in order to regulate our sense of discomfort and even anxiety.  Holding a door for someone, meaningless grins, saying "Hi" all do just that.

So what kinds of things do you do mostly unconsciously to smooth out social interactions and keep things of good cheer?  What do you do if you and one other person are at the bus stop, waiting for a hotel elevator, waiting in line at a book store when the clerk has to step away to check something, etc.?

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