Nerd Pride Radio

I'm weird about shaking hands. It's stupidly formal, really damn uncomfortable, and most people just have nasty hands. This doesn't exactly play well with job interviews. And all of my life, I've never understood the "have a good, firm hand shake" mentality to be anything more than seriously bullshit macho posturing. Is there something I'm missing here?

Can you legitimately get a read on a person by the way they pump your fucking paw about? Do you honestly believe it means anything, at all? That's an honest question. I've never understood why that means anything to anybody.

I don't think it is hard to imagine me as a relatively blunt personality, and having just a bit of a strong projection in terms of dialogue and thoughts. But I'm incredibly likely to give you an incredibly weak handshake...because I don't want to touch your grubby-ass food-to-face shovel, wedgie remover, and nose picker. So...who's making the better choice here?

You want to do hugs? Even the goofy, dudebro backslapping hugs? Sure. Fist bumps? Great. How about a polite wave from across the desk? Can we make that new interview standards? Really nice, polite waves.

Shaking hands never bothered me. But this one time, a board member of UPS messaged my shoulders, and it was the weirdest shit ever. Like, afterwords, me and my co managers talked aout it, and they were kinda creeped out. I did not enjoy it.

I totally understand your unwillingness to serve as a vector for illness, but then again, there are consequences to forgoing basic social niceties. The vise-grip shakes, though? Totally unpleasant. People with arthritis really love those, too. Once I encountered an elderly woman who was like, I'm just going to pat your arm because it hurts when people squeeze my hand. I felt badly for her that she had to jump out in front with that warning, given that people are frequently grabbing and squeezing her hand forcefully, in an effort to be friendly. The French have this solved with the two kisses. You get close but catch little besides air, and nobody's the worse for it!

Touching hands can be gross but it's no worse than touching money or door handles or anything else people touch with those hands. And then you get into "what's normal" vs. "what's normal for me". Is it normal to have a giant dispenser of sanitizer in your car and office so you can immediately sanitize after touching (see above - hands, money, doorknobs, whatever)? Maybe for some people, but if you know it's not healthy behavior for you, then you have to suck it up and touch people sometimes.

I shake hands when the situation calls for it. I hug my good friends when I see them.

Living with my two kids, no normal physical contact is going to slow my roll.

So true. I remember once when I was pregnant with #1 a guy my husband worked with explained that in parenthood, you become capable of some weird shit you never thought you would do. Like one day he stuck out both hands in a cup and caught his daughter's vomit because he had been there, done that, and didn't want to have to clean it out of the rug. And at the time we found this funny. Now we find it "normal life".

I've never cared for shaking hands, though not for germaphobe reasons. I'll shake someone's hand if they offer but almost never initiate a handshake. I see no point but I usually don't want to alienate/embarrass a semi-stranger by leaving them hanging.

Relying on a handshake for a serious business deal is a good way to get screwed and wind up in a court battle of their word against yours.

And yea, why would I want to attempt to hurt someone's hand? If I hate them that much, I'll wait until they're off guard and 'accidentally' stab a pen through their hand.

Look, I have a solid handshake. Firm and steady, but don't put on any pressure unless they start it and you need to resist. Pump once and done. No sense dragging this out.

People that piss me off are the ones who are making a power game out of it. People who use it to move in close. People who drag it out too long, making it clear that they're in charge of when we release. But the worst of them... the WORST... are the people who go in for the handshake slowly, and then at the last second, dart their hand forward to catch you before your ready. Fuck you and your power games. It's a handshake dammit. All you're proving is that you're a devious bastard who knows tricks to make people uncomfortable. Good for you.

what about fist bumping?

This and funny salutes. I'm telling you, we're going about this all wrong.

Should I ever wind up in a power game handshake, someone is going to wind up with a crushed knuckle or ask me to let go. They'll have been the one who decided it was a good idea to batter someone as some kind of bullshit game.

See now, this just doesn't happen to me. But people will sometimes HOLD the hand longer than a hand needs held, and that's so weird. Aggressive huggers are the worst, though. I don't mind huggers who permit you to approach or not approach at your discretion. Often I like to hug these people! No, I mean those people (ok, men) who are like, "boobies!!!!" (you can literally see this in their eyes as if floating across in a cartoon bubble) and then they grab you in a full-body press. Sometimes the upper butt gets involved with their hand, which is a Big No. The upside is that the enemy marks himself as such in this way. The other huggers who confuse me and create great anxiety are the ones you're related to distantly or kind of friends with (often female) and you certainly don't feel you're close enough for hugging, but they begin the hug lean and to refuse them is going to be real obvious, like you're not comfortable with them and not such great friends or cousins after all, so you try to go with it, but that little split-second moment of hesitation and lack of desire to hug is detectable, so they have their own recoil moment before awkwardly continuing the now-partial and weirdly wrong hug. UGH that's the worst - I can deal better with the boob pressers, honestly. After one of those awkward hugs you end up wondering if you've offended them, and feeling bad because none of this was your idea and why did they have to get in hug position, anyway? There are moments when you realize this whole Aspergers thing could come in many forms and maybe you just manifest it without some of the more common symptoms.

Hugs for people are great things. Side/hip hugs for new people. Full hugs for people I know. Those folks I want to hug who may not want a hug get a handshake first.