Fake politeness is one of the more perplexing human behaviors. There are some times when it is beneficial, like when you’re being nice to your employer so that you don’t get fired, or your wife so you don’t get murdered, but mostly it is nothing more than a waste of time. I like wastes of time and I really like observing them.
A few years ago a friend and I that worked together were discussing this ‘fake niceness’ when we observed it at a corporate, potluck style, Thanksgiving dinner. We were fascinated by how everyone took a little bit of this persons casserole or this persons mayonnaise-based salad knowing good and well that a lot of this food was suspect for salmonella at a minimum. Nevertheless, just to be nice these good folks loaded up on their coworker’s food and ate it with a smile.
“Oh Alice, this corn casserole is amazing!” someone would say smiling, as they slowly choked on a very thick hair.
My friend came up with a theory that he could bring anything and they would eat it. I challenged him and the next year he created something called, “Potato Grigio”, and told everyone it was an old family recipe. He halved a bunch of potatoes, scooped out the potato meat from the skin. Blended it with margarine and artichokes and put the contents back in the skins. Black olive slices served as a garnish. And sure enough, people took and ate the horrendous raw potato mixture. Some even went back for seconds.
With this knowledge in hand, I decided to see how far I could push it the next Thanksgiving and came up with my own, fake old family recipe. A Seafood Jello Mold inspired by the old southern tradition of aspics. I went to the store and bought clear gelatin, a can of smoked oysters, and a can of baby shrimp so old it had an inch of dust on it. I mixed it all together and let it sit outside overnight. The garnish was a bundle of parsley, rubberband still on.
When I brought this thing into the building (20k sq ft), the smell shot from one end to the other. It was almost as you could hear the waves crashing and the seagulls gulling. And when the time came, people lined up, put it on their plate, and ate this abomination with a smile on their face. After the meal, the CEO took me aside and told me that if I ever did anything like that again I wouldn’t make it to the next Thanksgiving. Joke was on him because later that day we found out the company had been sold and we were all laid off.