It seems like every culture expects guests to want to eat regardless of their circumstances, and if you refuse, you’re automatically rude and insulting.
If I offer you food and you refuse, I’m going to be quite happy. It means I get to save money and have more food to myself. I ain’t offering a second time if you say no the first time :maduro-coffee:
What in the fresh hell is this discourse? Any time anybody ever shows up at my place, the extent of the discussion is:
Me: “You want a glass of water?”
Them: “Nah I’m good.”
Me: “Okay. Let me know if you change your mind.”
And that’s it. If I’ve got some peanuts out I’ll offer those too. Have I been secretly violating some sort of universal set of social norms all this time? I just assume people mean what they say.
I don’t think many Anglos experience this because of their culture lol.
We don’t have one of those.
Thank you for explaining it. I was worried that I am so deeply autistic I’d overlooked some incredibly obvious social norm that everybody else understood except for me. :powercry-1:
Accepting Food is pretty much a universal sign of “I wont murder you in your house” and also you never know when some guy is gonna be Odin and then you’ll wish you offered them the Tea and Biscuits.
The system developed during times of famine. The first offer was to show that the host wanted to share food with the guest, even if they didn’t have any. The first response must be a refusal so the guest allows the host to save face. The second offer is the real offer, and you can accept or reject that one because it is an actual offer of food, not a forced offer.
