What compliments do you find to be offensive and why?

When they end the compliment with ”...for a big guy.”

I’m 6’0”, 270lbs.

When people I hardly know assume I am “nice”

Also bugs me when people say I am good with people. I am not rude therefore they assume am a people person. Being polite while I am eying the room for the nearest exit or open bar

_

Well, there was the time I showed up for a special-occasion dinner with my in-laws in a new dress and with freshly colored and styled hair, an expensive weave, and my mother-in-law said, “Oh, you’ve colored your hair. Did you do that yourself?” (i.e., for $6.99 in the bathroom and not $115 at the salon.)

And there are always the ones that are some variant of “Oh, that [hairstyle, coat, shade of lipstick, etc.] looks so much better than before!”

“You have good hair.”

All hair is good in my opinion. Just because I have straight hair doesn’t mean it is better than my daughter’s curly hair or my son’s nappy hair.

When I am practicing my juggling (which I can only do conveniently in a public venue- high ceilings and all that) people often ask me if I am in a circus/ want to be in a circus. They say this in the belief that the best jugglers are in circuses, and that to join them is the ultimate goal for anybody who practices juggling. It offends, me, however, that they would think that I would desire to spend my life performing hack tricks to annoying music in a tasteless costume all for the admiration of an audience that knows nothing about the difficulty of tricks that bore them, and the simplicity of the tricks that impress them. Juggling, to anyone who practices it, is a sport- it can be used for performance, and the easiest moves might be used as party tricks, but at the higher levels it becomes brutally difficult. Jugglers work as hard as any athlete, yet when we encounter the public, the assumption is usually that we are clowns or performers, and, understandably enough, no non-juggler really knows what is difficult and what is not; and so any compliments we get are, at best, based on total incomprehension of what I am doing, and at worst are simply insulting. Excuse me, but I have no desire to entertain your child, I am working on my bloody five-ball (6x,4)(4,6x)-to-reverse-cascade transition here.
Rant over. Jugglers are very bitter people, if you can’t tell.

@Jayne – so are banjo players.

Yeah, I have a friend who plays the banjo. He feels about the same way as I do.

I assume it’s a compliment when people I have never met before come up and ask “Hey, are you one of them smart kids or somethin’?” That is not really offensive to me, but it is really awkward.

I don’t think I’m bitter when playing the banjo. Possibly inconsiderate, but I wouldn’t say bitter. I don’t usually play it in public though.

You’re really photogenic.

If you actually look good in the picture = you don’t look as good in real life.
If you don’t look good in the picture = you look even worse in real life.

I’m actually quite relieved whenever someone tells me that I’m not photogenic.

@Jayne I’ve tried juggling, and just wasn’t coordinated enough. I applaud your dedication.

@Nimis Well, your avatar pic isn’t photogenic at all. It makes you look like a transparent myopic jelly (an adorable one, but still). :)

@mrswho Phew. Thanks!

@mrswho; it’s all down to practice; I can’t shoot a basketball to save my life, but I can juggle seven balls. I would encourage you to try it again. It is not only satisfying, but can also be fairly good exercise even at the lower levels. Even if you don’t take it very seriously, it’s a great thing to practice for a bit when you need to take a break from a project.

“You look healthy” can be interpreted as “Hey, you look like you put on some weight!”

I am a female and I play magic the gathering. In a room full of a hundred magic players, you can usually count the females on one hand, maybe two if dads have taught their daughters or guys have taught their girlfriends. Because I am female, the male players (who don’t know me) tend to assume I’m not very good or that I’m there because I’m someone’s girlfriend. Well, it really gets on my nerves when they tell me, in a surprised and sometimes miffed manner, that I’m a good player. I’ve been playing for 11 years, I damn well better be a good player.

Along the same lines is when someone tells me (again, in a surprised fashion) that I built a good deck.

@jeruba: I know how you feel. I dye my own hair and I know I don’t do nearly as good a job as a professional hairstylist would but when someone tells me they can tell I dye my own hair, I want to punch them square in the nose.

I’m also annoyed when, because of my unisex if not masculine name, people assume that I am male. One time at the doctor’s office I was marked as a male based on my name (hopefully) and when the nurse saw me she smiled and said that I looked too feminine to be a boy. I think that was meant as a compliment.

@KatawaGrey I’m a girl who played Magic the Gathering before! :D I was the only girl, but I may not have helped the cause by being there as a girlfriend and completely inept (making puns about tapping my manna cards constantly). Sorry for furthering stereotypes.

@mrswho: Haha, it’s cool. The girlfriends who learn how to play are way cooler than the ones who don’t. :)

@KatawaGrey, our home has been the site of hundreds of MTG marathons, and I have attended tournaments with my boys when they were really into it. In fact, the last game of Magic played here was over Christmas, among a now-professor, a soon-to-be lawyer, and a graduate student in the Classics who all started in middle school. I’ve seen how rare the female players are! And I think those guys are indirectly paying you genuine compliments, albeit in a grudging manner, because they obviously expected to beat you. You got ‘em twice, once for making a stupid assumption about a young lady and once for thinking they’d take advantage of an easy mark. Most likely they took away more lessons than they paid for.

@Jeruba: Oh, I’m blushing! :) Most of the guys I play against do not act like this and they are often lovely young men who quickly become my friends. Every once in a while though, there comes that guy who has almost no interaction with women and thinks he knows everything about the game. Those are always the most fun to beat and even the left-handed compliment is overshadowed by the feelings I take away from my victory.

PS: If any of your boys live in CT, we may have to get together and play a few games. i do so love playing against new people!

Sorry, Vermont. But my son’s ex-GF is at Yale, and she was a regular Magic-playing GF. I always gave her extra credit for that. I tried it myself a couple of times, just for a taste, but could not afford any new addictions.

oh.,.... the high school days of magic… how i miss thee…

i hate it… i hate it when people say nice low rider when in my car… i drive a blazer with no modifications or anything… i just have so much stuff in it that my 240 weight sends it low.

and nims… i am quite photogenic and my mom calls me quite handsome.

Mine are definitely:
“Gosh, you’re tall!”
“Do you play basketball?”

and my personal favorite: “Have you gotten taller?”
Not in the last 8 years!!

Ah, I almost forgot the new one that my uncle said to me the last time I saw him (at a funeral) “You’ve lost a ton of weight!”
Thanks, it was actually only 10 pounds (continuing in my head:) Was I fat? I didn’t think I was fat. I wasn’t even trying to lose weight…Should I be? Am I still fat? (You see how this could go on for quite a while in the mind of an impressionable young woman)...

@La_chica_gomela Ugh, the tall “compliments”!!! I’m almost 6 ft and I occasionally reply to “Do you play basketball” with “Are you a jockey?” It’s not so nice, but whatever- it’s a stupid reply to a stupid remark.

And yeah, I really hate the “you lost a ton of weight.” I got that when I had lost about 15 pounds. It’s like saying “You used to be SOOO fat!” Golly, thanks. Good to know I’m not disgusting anymore.

@Likeradar – I know, right!?!
The tall thing is hardly even a compliment! It’s more like a statement of obvious fact (the fact usually being that you’re a lot taller than they are, because we’re really not even that tall compared to…say…Yao Ming).

I usually give them a sweet “nope” with the slight head tilt, and the “you’re-an-idiot,-but-i’m-not-going-to-say-it-outloud” smile. (You know the one I’m talking about?)

I went gray when I was twenty one and one night my wife and I sat in the a restaurant and the waitress said. Sir would you and the young lady like to order? I replied that I am not old and the waitress replied for a forty year old man I look like a twenty year old!
I think that said it all, it was offensive and embarrassing.

I don’t get offended easily so these are not offensive, just annoying:

1. Whenever I am stressed about something, a lot of my friends say “Don’t worry. You are PnL. You’ll be fine. You are always fine.” There seems to be a misconception among many people that know me that I never have to work hard for anything since I just always get “lucky” or I am just naturally blessed with intelligence etc.

2. I hate when someone hears a foreign/exotic name which they can’t even pronounce and to hide their embarrassment they say “Oh that’s such a beautiful name!”

3. Others have kind of touched on this one – “Not bad…for a girl.” One guy made the mistake of saying that to me when he saw me playing billiards. I challenged him for a game, kicked his ass twice and then made him feel incompetent for the rest of the day :)

@antimatter, that was outrageous and deserved a scathing retort of the sort that you can only deliver on the spot if you happen to be reading from a TV script. I hope your tip showed your displeasure.

@PnL – ah, I totally do that to one of my friends! “You’re Maggy! What are you worried about? You always make a hundred! Except when you make a 99. I know those days must really suck for you…(laugh)”

As for my name, I’d rather someone say something that’s trying to be nice (if it sounds at all sincere), than just dive right in and butcher it (which is what usually happens). I just try to laugh and move on. I really love it when people add a bunch of syllables to my last name that aren’t there. I’m like, isn’t four enough for you?

@Jayne- I can relate to the stereotyping and admire that you have mastered juggling.
To be able to juggle 7 balls/items must require years of practice, determination and skill.

I face stupid assumptions too as an artist. It would seem that artists are considered to be eccentric social outcasts who have no need for money and just create complex art with ease. Some are visibly shocked when I charge a price for a painting that, if broken down to hours, is under $8. an hour and ask me why I charge so much.

And then there are those who want to use my work for free to put on products to sell or worse yet simply steal the image and use it for profit forcing me to send a cease and desist order. They do not understand that when they see puzzles, mugs and products that the artist enters a licensing agreement for royalties on sales.

They simply assume they can use what ever they want and that the artist wont mind because, as one person wrote back after getting a cease and desist, “You already sold the painting and made money and now you say I would have to PAY YOU to put it on my t-shirts? ” I figured by this they think I am wealthy and greedy- would be nice to be the former and I am not at all the latter.

My husband’s grandmother had the best. When you walk in the door she says, “Hi, you look like sh..t, come give me a kiss.” I hate it!!! Then she tells you what chair you can sit in, because you look fat and you might break the others.