So, I had a conversation today about the following:
It seems like often times, people will initiate plan-making conversations by saying something like the following:
"Hey, what are you doing on xyz day?"
The debate I had centered around this: is it rude for people to ask that, instead of just asking if a person is interested/able in partaking in whatever the asker had in mind? In some ways it's an efficient thing to ask - the inviting person wouldn't want to waste time extending the invitation if it's a moot point. In other ways, it puts the invitee on the spot, and it can sound rather invasive. It can make the invitee feel like they need to justify what they're choosing to spend their time on.
2 comments:
I would say it puts them on the spot however it's a common way to ask and I do it w/o realizing sometimes
I think people just do it without thinking most of the time. I think I usually just ask the person if they want to do that particular thing and not ask them what they're doing that day/night first. It can be used as a barrier or as a way of protecting yourself from rejection if, say, you're asking someone out. For instance, I was asked to go to a wedding with one of my guy friends whom I guess I was dating at the time, but instead of saying, 'hey I have a wedding tomorrow night--do you want to go with me?' he asked what I was doing the next night and since I said I wasn't doing anything, but then asked him what he was doing. Then he proceeded to say he had a wedding to go to and then asked if I wanted to go with him. I wonder if he still would've mentioned the wedding if I had said I had something going on. But even if I didn't have anything going on, I still could've said no if I didn't want to go with him. But of course I went with him lol.
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