Every day, all day, I have to lie to clients at work and tell them I’m good. I’m far from good and lying about it constantly is killing me.
I’m incredibly lonely and almost everything I usually enjoy feels like a goddamn chore.
Anyone else here feel like that? If so, how do y’all cope?
As others have pointed out, the problem is “How are you?” on its own is generally a greeting not a question.
As such the answer is largely irrelevant - so while it doesn’t have to be outright lie, the answer shouldn’t be longer than a single statement and shouldn’t make the other person feel like they need to be concerned.
If you want a slightly less beaming answer you could go with “Alright”, “same old, same old”, “same as always”, or “Eh, could be worse”, or any of the other suggestions already made.
This is an anglo, and specifically American tic, and it’s so weird.
It took me a few tries and getting some strange looks to get over it. Especially in the US, where sometimes they twist that knife harder and outright go “how was your day?”. If you’re going to be that specific I’m going to answer about the previous 24 hour period in detail, man, that’s just how language works.
We do have a form of “how’s it going” used as a generic greeting, but if we say “how are you” it means we’re worried and want to know. Mostly it’s just variations on “hello”, or “good day”, and some times a remark on how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other.
It ia very much an English speaking world thing, but I wouldn’t say US-centric as we have basically the same greeting in the UK.
Yeah, that wouldn’t fly as much here either - if somebody asked how my day was, I’d be inclined to think they want a summary at least.