Is It Possible To Be Too Helpful?

Korean people are very helpful. If you fell over in the street, as mentioned in a previous entry, there would be swarms of people helping you up. That’s no bad thing, and often you need help, say with directions, and Korean people are always happy to oblige. In short they are very friendly and helpful people. No sarcasm here. They are.

And it’s annoying.

OK, no it isn’t. One small aspect of it is…

Today I went for a meal with my co-workers (this meal deserves an entry all to itself, coming later) and we were eating a main course I wasn’t particularly fond of, when my boss saw that I hadn’t taken much (because I don’t fucking like it) and literally piled the stuff on my plate. Now I have to force down a food I can barely eat out of politeness…

This is the second time my boss, who is otherwise a great guy, has done this, and my previous school used to do it too! "Oh, you haven't taken many pickled octopus tentacles, here have some more" [Dinner lady empties a bucket of said tentacles onto my plate].

Koreans love rice-cake. They are a kind of savoury dough-like substance, often flavoured with vegetables or nuts etc. – kind of like a savoury cake, made of dough – the texture is difficult to describe as that’s the bit I don’t like, because we have literally no food of this texture in the West, well in the UK anyway. Think of, a kind of brick-sized lump of very, very chewy, cold pasta/cold dough type of texture and you’re somewhere close, although they come in all shapes and sizes.

Actually they taste pretty good – just rice and vegetables, but it’s the texture. There are some things that just don’t feel right in the mouth and make me physically wretch – rice cake is one of them, excessive fat on meat is another e.g. a large lump of fat on a pork chop. I can't swallow it. (Grow up at the back!) Bleeeuuurrrgghhhh…

Anyway, my point is that at lunch one day, I’d taken one teeny gobstopper-sized rice cake, just to be polite, my boss saw this, and just piled about twenty on my plate, to, you know, be helpful. I had to simply tell him at this point, “Sorry boss, I really, genuinely don’t like these things”. He was a little disappointed, but I really can’t eat ‘em. It’s possible to be too helpful.

Another time I was in a shop, admiring a nice blue shirt, and, typically, the shop assistant was all in my fucking face trying to be ‘helpful’. This shirt had all the buttons done up, and I wanted to open up the top button to see what the open neckline looked like, because it had button-down collars which don't always look good without a tie.

So I’m struggling with these new buttons and all the bits of plastic and clips etc. they always put on new shirt collars, and the shop assistant comes over, takes the shirt off me, holds it up to me and says ‘looks good!’. I’m thinking ‘Well you would fucking say that anyway’ and take the shirt back and try to continue undoing the top buttons, which I need to do. He watches me for another minute or so, then grabs it off me yet again and does something else to the shirt, adjusts the labels, shows me the price, tells me how great it is etc. etc. …in the end, I snatch it back, ‘I just wanna undo the top button to see what it looks like, for fuck's sake’ (I thought, not said).

Yes, you can be too helpful. You tried to help me, but all you did was fucking annoy me, and waste a substantial amount of my time. If you’d stayed at the back of the store, I would have unbuttoned the shirt and decided by now, but no, you had to come over and be TOO damn helpful.

Koreans try to guess what you are doing. They watch you, looking for an opportunity to leap in and help you. This is the most fantastic thing in the world when you are lost/drunk/looking for the toilet, but is the most annoying thing ever when you are fully in control looking at a shirt, or deciding for yourself what food to eat. I'm an adult. I'm not blind, illiterate or stupid. If I didn't take seventeen octopus tentacles, it's not because I didn't notice them and need your assistance to put me right! There's helpful, and there's patronising. When my boss put the extra rice cakes on my plate, I half expected a little pat on the head.

Oh, and I bought the shirt.

Oh again. The food in the first paragraph was dog meat. Not dog food. Dog. Meat. Did I like it? Hmmmm.……