What is it with greetings?

What would you say when someone says good morning and asks how you are?

I don’t want to stereotype anyone but this is just my observation on the coach to Byron Bay for my skydiving trip. Our driver picked us up in Brisbane at 5:30am and would pick different people up at different spots in the Gold Coast. During that three-hour drive, I witnessed how most of the Asians would not respond anything at all to the driver’s greetings when they hopped on. After the driver opened the door of the coach, he would energetically say good morning and ask about their morning. People would ignore his greetings and go on to find their names on the sheet of paper the driver has. I am not sure how the driver must have felt when he greeted the people and did not get any response at all. If I were him, I would feel sad and disappointed because I greeted people out of politeness and courtesy and they didn’t show theirs, which is disheartening.

I don’t want to act like Little Miss Bossy because I would assume that people know what they are doing and I don’t want to point fingers at people. But shouldn’t we at least return the courtesy when people greet us? Perhaps one of the reasons is that we don’t do that enough in schools. Greetings in schools are done as a routine not as genuine care and courtesy. That is evident by the boring word-by-word robotic voice when students all go “good...morning...Miss...Lee...” without any emotions. That is exactly why I always greet my students, ask about their day and make sure there’s real communication going on instead of a routine. When you make it into a routine, you do it because you have to, not because you want to, which actually is the real point of communication.

I don’t want to make it into a boring lecture but maybe we can all reflect a little bit about how we usually say hi and greet people. In my next post, I will talk about ways to greet people. But first, let me take another nap 💤on the remaining one-hour drive to Byron Bay for my much anticipated skydive!