Reply to How polite are you obligated to be to someone who is unwittingly rude or inconsiderate?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP here. I think people are misunderstanding my question. I am not talking about "getting in a tizzy" or "reading the riot act." I'm not talking about being angry or rude. I'm asking what degree of politeness you think these situations obligate you to have. How gently and politely do you need to be when letting someone know they are being rude or inconsiderate?

In other words, I would assume some level of tact and politeness as a civil person (I'm not going to swear at someone or call them names or shout at them, etc.) but there are degrees of politeness.

For instance, in the kitchen example, say this person has come into the kitchen, planted themselves in between two work stations that you need to be accessing to keep something from burning and also preparing an ingredient that needs to be added shortly, and then they ask you a friendly question totally unrelated to what you are doing. Normally I'd consider it impolite to ignore a question or an invitation to make conversation, but in that situation I think they are actually being rude (unintentionally, by failing to read the situation and understand it's not a good time to chat), so I might be more curt "sorry, can't talk about this now, and can I get behind you I need to pull those." It's not polite but I don't think it's rude or mean -- just direct. But some people seem to need a lot more than that and will get upset by that.

So my question was broadly, how much do you need to work at protecting the feelings of someone whose being unwittingly rude. I guess I land on the side of "not that much" but it seems like some people think you need to be very tactful in these situations. I was curious how others viewed it, but I think people have misread my question to assume I'm yelling at people or having dramatic confrontations, when I'm just being direct about the fact that they've misstepped in some way.[/quote]

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