Say Please: Or don’t? Pretty words can’t erase ugly realities

Neon SIgn by Alena Jarrett, Unsplash

It was the pumpkin seeds that started it.

At our giant grocery store here in New Zealand, I always start with the bulk food aisle.  On that Wednesday morning, an older woman was stocking the shelves, her rolling cornucopia of bulk goods carefully packaged in plastic bags a little too big for our household of two. I stepped around her to grab the cashews, the pistachios, and the dried apricots. Next on my list were the pumpkin seeds, but those were out of reach behind the mid-section of her cart.

 I love pumpkin seeds almost as much as I love giant grocery stores. My son introduced me to them. “Pepitas,” they call them at giant grocery stores in the states. They’re the perfect food: rich and delicious, with a lovey smooth texture and a deep olive-green, delicious roasted and salted but healthier without the salt.  I put them in salads and munch them right out of the bag.

 The woman didn’t acknowledge my presence.

Rather than deal with her, I decided to circle back after collecting all the other goods we needed. The list was long—two-week’s-worth for my husband and me. Surely, she’d be gone by the time I returned. I went on my merry way, grabbing each item and crossing it off the list until only two legible words remained: pumpkin seeds.

Maybe I was too efficient. When I circled back, the woman and (more importantly) her rolling cart were exactly where I’d left them. There she stood on her two-step ladder, right in front of the pumpkin seeds; no way to reach around without a very awkward encounter. With my choices limited and time marching on, I decided to try using my words. Most days, I’m pretty good at that.

“Excuse me. Do you suppose I could get some pumpkin seeds?”

I expected a bit of bustle. I thought she might grab one of the tidy bags and pass it to me. Barring that, I expected her to Get.Out.Of.My.Way.

Instead, she turned around. With frizzing grey hair, a pointed nose and blood-shot eyes, she looked like an angry weasel defending its lair.

“Please.” she said, looking down from her height.

Surely, I mis-heard. “Sorry?” I replied (polite for “WTF?”)

“Please.”

 I figured it was not my place—as a foreigner in her country—to make a scene. I just stood there breathing in—breathing out. Eventually, she heaved a sigh, climbed down from her ladder, and pushed her rolling table way down the aisle; about 10 feet away, as if she wanted to be as far from me as possible. I snatched two bags of pumpkin seeds (not wanting to come back anytime soon).

“I’m sorry.” I turned to her, emphasizing both words. Maybe she was hard of hearing?

“Will you be needing anything else?” She sounded put out.

“No thank you.”

I left her aisle and a few minutes later found myself enjoying a genial conversation with a young checker about the joys of raising a two-year-old.

 Walking through the parking lot, I couldn’t help talking to myself. I must have looked a little mad, muttering and shaking my head. What did she have against me anyway? Why couldn’t I just say please? Was I an ugly American?

 Had I disrespected this hard-working woman? The COVID years shifted how we think of grocery store clerks. Like many others, I’ve become increasingly aware of the essential work it takes to keep food on the shelves. Here I was, enjoying the freedom of retirement while she worked as a stocker in her golden years. Yes, I concluded. She might have felt put down—something I would never want to inflict on anyone. I would lose a sleep over that—tossing and turning; reviewing every time I had failed to say please, resolving to do better, knowing full well that I wouldn’t.

Such Wheedling!

But, honestly, please is such a wheedling kind of word. It’s like you’re groveling, pleading, begging.

I never insisted that my children use it, but my son married a mid-westerner and, eager to civilize their first-born, he and my daughter-in-law require that their son say please whenever he wants something like a popsicle or a cookie. They’ll pause with a tasty treat in hand and say, “What’s the magic word?” If he doesn’t respond appropriately, they get more direct, “Say please!”

“Peez.” He says. So cute. Everything he says is cute, but his peez is especially adorable. Or is it? We call it the magic word, but nobody explains that it’s a weak kind of magic. If he wants something forbidden like more screen time or a third cookie, “peez” doesn’t deliver. I wonder how disillusioned he’ll be when he sorts this out.

 We have the French to thank for this bit of language. Our “please” stems from their s’il vous plait (If it pleases you), which has its roots in the classical Latin, placer (to be pleasing or agreeable).

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) offers a dozen definitions, among them “To appease, placate, pacify or propitiate,” most often used when making requests of a superior or of God. “May it please you,” morphed into “If you please,” to introduce a respectful request.

I imagine a much different conversation with the friendly stocker. I artfully place my hand on my heart, bow my head, sink into a deep curtsy and introduce my request with “May it please you madam…”

Her reply? “Madam, it pleases me not.”

Prettifying Life?

Maybe I should have tried the “imperative please,” which we owe to mid-16th century Scotts (some of whose progeny would settle in New Zealand). Here, please represents an order. The OED offers an 18th century example of this usage, found in the Beekman Mercantile Papers, which include a letter from W. Provoost dated 25 August, 1757. This long-ago merchant wrote, “Please to send me the following: 1 Dozen of Black mitts, one piece of Black Durant fine.”

I see myself striding like royalty towards the lowly stocker, looking down my nose, and saying, “Please to move out of my way.” I might try the modern version: “Please move out of my way.” Would that have gone over any better than my meek “Excuse me?”

 What makes please magic anyway?  Some say it turns an order into a request. Does it really? E.L. Konigsburg, seems to be defending politeness for breaking the first rule in Strunk & Whyte’s Elements of Style, “Omit needless words.” In her 2011 book, Throwing Shadows, she explains,

 It is sometimes necessary to use unnecessary words like

 “thank you” and “please” just to make life prettier.

But pretty words don’t erase ugly realities. When please fancies up an order that cannot be refused, the word loses its magic. Those who are subjected to the imperative please over and over see through the prettiness to a raw exercise of power. 

 Europeans have criticized American manners at least as long as there has been a United States. In her 19th century travelogue, Domestic Manners of the Americans, British author Frances Trollope (wife to the famous Trollope) bemoans the uncouth manners she encountered at American tables.

Would that I had read her critiques before my first turbulent weeks in New Zealand. In 2007, I was a fellow at a residential college at the University of Otago, where I would teach for 10 years. As a senior resident, I sat at the high table where we practiced high manners.

At first, I was surprised by my tablemates’ interest in my nutrition. They kept asking whether I had had a dish that was sitting right next to my hand.

“Would you like some potatoes, Amanda?”

“No, thank you.” If I did want potatoes, I had only to reach over and take them. Clearly, I was missing something and my puzzled response always brought a smile.

Finally, a tender-hearted soul explained to me that this was my fellow residents’ way of asking me to please pass the dish so they could have some potatoes.

“Oh my god. They must think I was raised in a barn!”

“Well, my dear, you’re American.”

It took years for me to get over my embarrassment at being an uncouth American. But these days I just am what I am. I no longer try to fit in by softening my accent. Americans may be coarse and loud. We may be bulls in the antipodean China shop, but old folks around here have told me they still remember the welcome sight of American warships steaming into Auckland harbor after months of sheer terror at the possibility of a Japanese invasion. And over the years I’ve come to realize how very many kiwis actually like Americans. These days, when I talk my talk, people sometimes comment on my “lovely accent.”

“It makes me feel like I’m in a movie!” The man-boy behind the counter gushes.

Reprise

I have gone back to that giant grocery store for the odd loaf of bread, jug of milk, carton of eggs, but I haven’t yet seen my stocker. I expect I will eventually and, when that happens, I plan to gaze gently into her eyes, offer a tentative smile, and reach out to shake her hand. I might say, in my American accent,

 “Hello. I’m Amanda. How are you today?”

There might be an awkward pause. Then she’ll take my hand in hers and report that she is fine, thank you. She might walk away muttering and shaking her head, but at least we’ll have shared a moment of connection.  

In this era of incivility, it’s worth thinking about how we enact politeness. I think it is incredibly rude to demand polite words while withholding polite behavior. It strips the words of their magic and introduces the very ugliness to social commerce that politeness is designed to eliminate. Perhaps we ought to consider whether we’re using words to express our respect for others or simply to kow-tow or paper over crass realities. And, perhaps, when it comes to saying “Please,” we ought to really mean it more often.