!7# Angry Birds 12-10 Quickly: 2011

!±8± Is it Rude to Say Hey?

Some people often say ""Hey"? today instead of "excuse me" or "pardon" or "I beg your pardon" when they haven't heard or understood what it is that you have said. Is this a rude and discourteous response to someone's conversation? How does it make you feel when someone replies to you with a straight or cranky look and they say "hey" abruptly.

If you are like many people, you may feel almost insulted but definitely disinclined to repeat in full what you have just said to elicit that response. It could make you feel rejected, hurt, angry and any number of other things. But one of the things it does do is to mark the person who responds to an unheard or misunderstood question with "hey" is that they are bad mannered individuals.

In a peer group of uneducated people hanging around a corner 'shooting the breeze' it may be the accepted practice. This is a case of "birds of a feather, flocking together" so it may be acceptable to the group.

However, if you are in a job interview and one of the interviewers asks you a question that you haven't heard properly or understood, and you respond with "hey?" then don't expect to have a successful outcome to that interview simply because you have immediately shown that you have no respect for other people or their feelings and are highly unlikely to be a good team player. If you are going to be in a team, then you have to (a) be acceptable to the other team members and (b) have to be able to get along with the other team members.

If you are in a casual social situation and you turn to someone jokingly and say "hey, what's that" with a smile on your face it could be construed as being playful but if you turn to someone and say "hey?" abruptly without a smile then you are most likely going to be thought of as being rude and or angry over something.

Spoken language and body language often mirror each other quite well in meaning when rude people say "hey". Next time someone says it to you, remember to take note of their facial features when they do so and in particular their eyes. These will always give you the precise meaning of what they are feeling/thinking/meaning when they speak so rudely to you.

If a person is in a more formal social situation like a cocktail party or after-work drinks with colleagues and someone responds with "hey?" to something that you've said, take notice of how you feel at the time. Saying "hey" is rude in any educated social activity with colleagues and in a formal social setting like a cocktail party it is definitely a "No-No" if you want to be invited to the next social gathering.