There's a term in Chinese, '应酬' (Yìng chóu) which roughly translates to 'treating someone with courtesy' or in a rather crude way could even been seen as 'kiss-ass', usually involved with working environments. If you have to meet up with your manager or boss for a drink even though sometimes you might not want to, that's 应酬. You go for a party with your colleagues and stay later than you wanted to because your social battery has run out 100%, that's 应酬. If someone keeps offering you to take something, you might eventually accept it simply because it's politer than if you kept rejecting.
Basically, you are doing something that you don't really want to in the name of courtesy and out of respect for those people in management positions or some other posts.
That's what my man did last night after leaving my place. He had to collect some work stuff from a 'friend', who asked him to go for a drink. My man tried rejecting, explaining that it was already getting late and he has to go for classes tomorrow so it was better not to drink. The friend's response was to bring him to a pub nearer to his house instead and so he had to go; there was no escape. There’s just some things that you would have to do for your business.
He apologized to me when he finally got home. Although he didn't do anything or request for one, his friend ordered for a bucket of alcohol and had a pub girl accompany him for those drinks. My man had to drink some even if he didn’t really want to.
Of course I didn’t like the fact that he went to that kind of place at all, and even more so since he went out looking real good and there would certainly be girls eyeing him there (Those girls are really just doing their jobs, I know, but still). I didn’t like the thoughts of other girls clinging on him or touching him either, and so I was a little upset when he told me where he got home from.
My boy was very very upset too, however. He knew I wasn’t going to be happy about it and knowing that made HIM upset in return. You see, both of us don’t like each other going to places involving alcohol and touchy people – which is something that’s inevitable in places like clubs and pubs. Hell, we don’t even like going to those places ourselves; Mostly because we know, acknowledge and respect the other’s preferences not to mingle around in those places, and partly because it was simply too noisy & crowded most of the time.
So while I was feeling all sad and pouty about the whole incident, he was feeling bad about his job sometimes requiring him to do things that he knows I wouldn’t be happy with. I know he didn’t exactly have a choice though, so I tried to rationalize with myself to make that upset feeling go away. After all, he’s the most loyal boy I have ever known and he told me about whatever that happened and what did not. I appreciated the honesty. The rest of the night was filled with profuse apologies and comforting each other until we finally went to sleep because we were just so tired at the end of the long, long day.
Well, that’s our story on this whole 应酬thing. What’s your experience with things you had to do out of courtesy?
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