The waiter puts your plate down, smiles and says, \u201cEnjoy your meal.\u201d And you, a grown adult with a mortgage and a driving licence, reply: \u201cYou too.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is not eating. He is holding a tray. He is about to walk back to a kitchen full of people shouting about a missing portion of chips, and you have just wished him a lovely dinner.<\/p>\n
You know the silence that follows. A tiny, dignified pause in which you both pretend nothing has happened. Then he leaves, and you replay it in your head for the next forty minutes. It isn\u2019t only waiters, either. The cinema usher says \u201cEnjoy the film\u201d and out it comes. The airport assistant says \u201cSafe flight\u201d and out it comes. The shop assistant says \u201cHave a good day\u201d, and you tell her she should too, as she heads into an eight-hour shift under strip lighting.<\/p>\n
So why does our mouth go ahead without checking with our brain?<\/p>\n
Linguists call it an adjacency pair. Some remarks arrive with a reply slot built in: a greeting expects a greeting, a thank you expects a \u201cno problem\u201d, and a well-wish expects a well-wish. Your brain registers the shape of the sentence, something kind said in your direction, and fires back the matching piece before the meaning has finished arriving. Add the human itch to return a kindness, and the ledger has to balance. He wished you well, so you wish him well.<\/p>\n
The trouble is that \u201cyou too\u201d is the quickest all-purpose return, and it only fits if the wish applies to both people. Technically, it doesn\u2019t. Socially, it\u2019s perfect. Waiters have heard it so many times that it barely registers, which is a small mercy.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the twist. The reason nobody minds is that the sentence was never really about the meal. In 1923 the anthropologist Bronis\u0142aw Malinowski gave this kind of talk a name: phatic communion, speech that exists to create a bond rather than pass on information. \u201cEnjoy your meal\u201d means \u201cI see you, and you\u2019re welcome here.\u201d \u201cYou too\u201d means \u201cI see you as well.\u201d In the only sense that matters, your reply was flawless.<\/p>\n
So next time, say it with confidence. And if the waiter ever answers, \u201cThanks, I will,\u201d leave a generous tip. Anyone that quick deserves it.<\/p>\n
Go on, confess: when did you last say \u201cYou too\u201d to someone who absolutely wasn\u2019t eating? I want the ones I haven\u2019t covered yet.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The waiter puts your plate down, smiles and says, \u201cEnjoy your meal.\u201d And you, a grown adult with a mortgage and a driving licence, reply: \u201cYou too.\u201d He is not…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[430,53,233],"tags":[292,517,80,472,587,589,586,588,585,435],"class_list":["post-1516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everyday-psychology","category-humour","category-why-do-we-do-that","tag-awkward-moments","tag-everyday-psychology","tag-humour","tag-language-quirks","tag-manners","tag-phatic-communication","tag-politeness","tag-restaurant-etiquette","tag-social-etiquette","tag-why-do-we-do-that"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1516"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1518,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1516\/revisions\/1518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}