Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.
Hey Mr. C.,
Even though school is almost over for this year, the work never ends for us kids!
That’s right, it’s summer job time again, which means me and my friends have to sweat bullets to come up with a fresh list of reasons for why we don’t have summer jobs!
This is good practice because it helps build up a life skill – deflecting unwanted questions. And that’s tougher now than it was in the olden times, like two years ago. Back then all you had to say was “tough economy” and everybody was like, “Well, yeah!”. But now you say “tough economy” and they say “I heard it was getting better”.
And maybe it is, but not for teenagers!
People always think we can go get work in some fast food place, like there are suddenly thousands of open jobs as soon as school lets out because teenagers are hanging around all day to eat more and more fast food in the summer. But we don’t eat more fast food because we don’t have any money because we don’t have jobs. And if the fast food joints hired us so we could have money, then we could buy the food but we wouldn’t because we can already eat the spillage and wrong orders and leftovers behind the counter during our shifts!
Economics sure gets complicated!
The only other people who would have more time to go to a burger joint between June and September are the teachers, but when they place an order with a kid behind the counter who is also one of their students, the teachers kinda expect to get their fries upsized for free. And the kids do it because who knows if that teacher is the one who will hold your whole future in her hand when she decides whether you got a “B” or a “C” on that essay?
That takes a real mental toll, trying to decide if it’s ethical to bribe a teacher with french fries. It’s almost as taxing as writing and rehearsing that no-job excuse.
Speaking of which, here are some of the best ones I’ve heard so far:
- I’m going to summer school to (catch up on / get ahead of) my regular classroom work.
- I’m doing super-honorable extracurricular volunteer stuff to pad my college application and make me seem like I’m a much better person than I am.
- I’ve taken an unpaid internship so I can get experience being overworked and under appreciated.
People tell me that last one will really prepare me for life in the adult world, but they’re all good excuses. One bad thing, though. They all require extra explaining because adults will pepper you with questions like: Where are you going to summer school? What are you studying? Where do you volunteer? What colleges are you going to apply for? Where is the internship? How awful is that boss? Etc, etc, etc.
More work for us, because making up things is hard, especially when the stories have to be believable.
So whenever you see a report that says American teens don’t want to work, you should ask us what we’re doing with our time this summer. You’ll see us working pretty darn hard to deflect that question!
Your pal,
Bubby
I told Bubby that I agree – using your brain to be coy can be great practice for life in the real world. Unfortunately, the only field I know of where you can get paid specifically to deflect questions is politics.
How do you answer the uncomfortable question?
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. Life seems to be filled with uncomfortable questions. There are questions about all those things you should have done. Interviews, such as job interviews, usually include questions that aren’t much fun. Also, there are everyday encounters with people who ask about things you would rather keep to yourself.
Bubby is right. It can be a lot of work coming up with answers to some of those unwelcome questions. You have to be careful about out right lying because you could get caught lying which might be a big problem. A white lie might be the best answer. That would be an answer that isn’t exactly truthful, but is not too risky such as “I don’t know what you are talking about” or “I don’t remember”.
For the really tough questions, you need to remain cool and find some way to avoid saying any thing that you might regret. I have never been very good at this. I have a tendency to get defensive and tell people what I really think which usually leaves me in a bad position.
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I find it is sometimes useful to ask for clarification as to what is really being asked. Make the discussion about the question, not the answer.
I’m also a fan of the counter-question, “why do you ask?”.
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“:Hmm, that’s a hard one.” can buy time to think of other evasions or plan an escape.
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MY first filter question is “Why is that any of your business?” Next is “Why do you want to know?” My last, desperate response goes something like this:
Chris in Owatonna
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Thank you, Chris. I love this video more than I can say.
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Excellent, Chris!
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🙂
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Yesssss!
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Not sure why that came to me, since I hadn’t seen the movie in a long-g-g-g time. But wife and I took in the touring show in Duluth back in the early 80s and enjoyed it immensely. Strike one for being able to remember something that obscure for 30 years. 🙂
Chris
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my response is usually thanks for asking.
its not sidesteping if the question was rhetorical which it almost always is.
if you get the feeling that the question is sincere and they ask how its going i can tell them about the visit to the doctor my back problems and the childrens progress in various event and stages of life, the overall take on the wellness of the universe and the plans i have laid out for the next little while with the 5 or 6 new things i am working on and the levels of success and failure i find in each. i reallly do apprecaite the questions and th the sincere interest and how praytell is your life going by the way.
i have a friend who drives me crazy because i see him so infrequently and he is so goo asking about you that i never realize he never tells me about his situation nor does he intend to. if cornered he will admit hed rather not get into it but he is so good at sidestepping that it rarely comes up
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I do like those mentioned already. Sometimes I don’t mind answering, for instance if it’s about my son Joel who died in 2013 – I usually like telling stories about him. If it’s about the hard stuff, though, and it is someone I don’t mind talking to, I say “How much time do you have?” If they don’t have time, they only get the short version.
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Of course we all know the original uncomfortable question, a variant of which is “Where do babies come from?” I clearly remember the day–and it was actually a day and a night and about half of the next day–when my daughter asked this question and got the answer and then had about 682 follow-up questions.
I might have posted this before:
My friend George M dreaded the day the question would come up with his son, George Junior. He should have dreaded the followup question. When George got through his shaky, mostly-true version of the story, George Junior said, “Eeeeewww! That’s just gross, Father. Please tell me that you and Mother don’t still do this thing!”
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Neither of my children asked. I wonder what that signifies?
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if he comes from the typical american household he could honestly answer that he and mother dont do that any more
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ROTFLOLAWM! I think I would have remembered this, Steve – one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.
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OK, I’m crying from laughter here in my little cube. While Child asked a few questions… she wasn’t even remotely this curious about the whole process. Although she did ask a seminary student once if he had the “p” word. In the grocery store. In a voice you could hear in Iowa.
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I am usually on the asking end of uncomfortable questions, as is Jaque, I imagine. Like the nosey character from Sense and Sensibility, I manage to “winkle” information out of people pretty handily.
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I’ll bet you are good, Renee. There is quite a skill involved in asking questions that get people talking, even when they have something to hide. The best at this that I ever met was a game warden. He could ask a few non-threatening questions and suddenly the person who didn’t want to talk would have talked himself into a corner.
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Unless it is their business to ask me:
Phase one–stare at them and aw it for them to speak again
Phase two–ask them the same question
Phase three–end the conversation
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Afternoon all. Sorry I’ve been silent for a few days – spent most of the weekend outside and am now in a whirlwind of fun in my cube.
I get questions I don’t like or know the answer to all the time in my job. My reflex is easy… “I’ll check on that.” Have used it twice already today!!!
OT – don’t forget about the Homeless in St. Paul Farewell on Sunday. If you need details – drop me a line. shelikins at hotmail.
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Last year, a mother brought her 13-year old daughter to me to teach her the basics of sexuality. First, I asked the teen if she knew why she was here (she did) and she promptly told me that she already “knew everything”. My first question (awkward) was, “So then, do you know about erections?”. She looked at me and said, “um – NO” Now then, imagine trying to explain how a guy gets excited and then this “thing” happens to part of his anatomy! Awkward. Then, how do you describe what happens next with that erection?
The reason I even asked this first is that my own mom had “the talk” with me and left out the part about erections. I just couldn’t figure out how that “thing” got into the other “thing” much less the vigorous activity between the two “things” and the wet part. Here I was, faced with how to explain or describe this to someone else’s daughter. Awkward.
A few years later, this now almost grown girl returned for a session and we both laughed ourselves silly about that awkward meeting. I still don’t have a clue about how I’d confer this knowledge, but I know for damn sure that I’ll never offer to give “the talk” again!
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Back to the original question “how do you handle uncomfortable questions?” Easy – I say, “Why would you ask that?” or, alternately, “What is it that you really want to know?” This gives the other person pause and it communicates that they’ve stepped over the line a bit.
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I like “What is it that you really want to know?”
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I think the most honest response would be to simply say, “Wow, that’s a really uncomfortable question. I don’t think I’m going to answer that.” I can’t seem to say that, though – why is that?
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