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Some weeks ago in my discussion of the various types of Awkward Hug, I promised to discuss Awkward Greetings in general. If goodbyes are fraught with the potential for social gaffes and existential angst, so are hellos. The factors involved are numerous, and a taxonomy of awkward greetings is necessarily a work in progress. Nonetheless I believe I have made a start with the following list of 7.

1. Kissing. Usually I deal with the awkwardness involved in kissing by doing an exaggerated sort of French style mwah mwah, but this does not work with the mouth-to-mouth crowd. Not only are they happy to undermine the good work done by years of public health education, they impose on others the kind of intimacy more appropriate to couples who spend time together in Builders Warehouse. Many of us have issues deeply rooted in the distant misty memories of childhood, of the terror of attending family lunches and being set upon by dithery aunties and drunken uncles, lips planted on lips, unable to escape.

Avoidance techniques include the last minute duck to the side so that mouth connects with cheek, but many mouth kissers have cottoned onto that one and now hold you firmly by your upper arms in order to reduce maneuverability. All you can do in situations like these is get the flu shot, dose yourself with one of those herbal immunity concoctions they sell in Clicks, and hope for the best.


2. The handshake, neutral a gesture as it may appear, is fraught with potential for the cringeworthy faux pas. In the first place, how much pressure do you apply? Too much and you’re perceived as pushy, insensitive and aggressive, too little and you’re a self-centred namby-pamby wuss who can’t be trusted. An especially distressing type of awkward handshake occurs when the person to whom you’re being introduced waits for the moment of acquaintance to pass and then does not let go.

Then there’s the African handshake that goes wrong. Do you? Don't you? What if you assume it’s going to be an African handshake and it isn’t? Or impose your imperialist customs by shaking in the Western way instead? These are the kind of things that drive modern man to ask for prescriptions for benzodiazepines.

3. Names. Utterly terrifying, especially when you cannot remember them. In a corporate setting, this can be avoided by the tactical exchange of business cards early on in the conversation. However, when there are no excuses for your apparent early onset Alzheimers, it can get tricky. The most stressful situation of all involves running into an acquaintance and being required to introduce him or her to other people you happen to be with at the time. This is also known as the ohmygodI’veforgottenhisname greeting, in which space and time seem to stretch into eternity as you try to will the other into rescuing you by just bloody well saying their own name. Pure agony.


4. Bathrooms, especially bathrooms at work. There are few greetings more awkward than the one exchanged between colleagues exiting and entering a cubicle, particularly if the air is heavy with the scent of Glade Lavender. The most dreadful aspect of bathroom encounters is the Skidmark That Won’t Go Away. “It’s not mine, it was there when I got here,” you want to say, but you cannot bring yourself to utter the words. Instead, you must abandon yourself to the dreadful knowledge that somebody in the office thinks you haven’t mastered basic hygiene.

I am led to believe that men face different challenges, especially if one is midstream when a colleague arrives at the urinals and any kind of distraction could have disastrous consequences. As a rule, anonymity while performing ablutions is much less stressful.


5. Forced greetings of people who prompt feelings of fear, loathing, guilt or embarrassment. Old flames, people who passed you over for promotion, former bosses, suppliers you know you screwed over, the straight male acquaintance you spotted at a gay club the other night, your current love interest’s ex; the list goes on. Encountering a client at your local shopping centre is particularly fraught, because the dynamic that rules at the office can hardly be expected to prevail over the weekend. Do you fawn? Do you use the opportunity to hint at what you really think of them? There are no right answers, mainly because you’ll probably do the wrong thing anyway.

A favourite forced greeting of mine is the tight non-smile, favoured by female colleagues who would really rather not acknowledge the presence of the other but who are required to pretend for the sake of politeness. This involves pursing the lips, stretching them in the shape of a smile, and thinking “Bitch bitch bitch bitch” as you pass one another in the passage.

6. In many ways the tight non-smile can be viewed as a form of the next type of awkward greeting, the Fuck You. I generally consider the type specimen of the Fuck You to be the no-eye-contact-barely-acknowledge-your presence grunt. This is common at braais and birthday parties amongst people who have conquered the strictures of subatomic physics and are able to look straight through apparently solid objects, usually other guests.

The recipient of this non-greeting is left feeling, awkward, belittled and angry. I know this sensation well, for I have been subjected to the Fuck You so many times I’ve begun to assume that this is in fact the standard mode of social interaction amongst South Africans, and to expect anything else is to set oneself up for dreadful disappointment. Our World Cup visitors found us all surprisingly friendly, but that’s because we reserve our most withering indifference for our fellow citizens.

7. Which leads me to the ultimate awkward greeting, which is not a greeting at all. It is The Blank, reserved for people you can’t be arsed to speak to (if we both pretend neither of us saw the other, we won’t have to make the effort) - but most especially for sworn enemies and nemeses. Last year I blanked one of my bêtes noirs as I travelled down the escalators outside the Virgin Mobile at Sandton City and he was going up; our eyes met in a moment of appalled revelation before we were carried away in opposite directions, never to speak of this horror again. (Until now, obviously.)


I’ve totally exceeded my word limit, but even then, this list is probably way too short. Other suggestions are welcome and, if I’ve missed anything obvious, I promise I’ll write about this again. You can hold me to it.