Politeness Is Not a Password, and Never Was

A particular kind of message arrives here fairly often. It is elaborately polite. It compliments the site, the roster and the writing. It apologises twice for taking up time. And then, at the bottom, having established credit, it asks for the one thing no thread can give.

The politeness is real and it is appreciated. It is also not currency, and treating it as currency produces a slightly awkward exchange in which somebody has paid for something that was never on sale.

Two different things doing two different jobs

Courtesy here is practical. It makes an arrival easier, it makes a room easier to be in, it makes an hour more pleasant for two people who have not met. Those are real effects and they are worth having for their own sake.

What courtesy does not do is change what a booking thread can settle, because that limit has nothing to do with how anybody is behaving. It exists because the person who decides what a session includes is not in the conversation. A polite guest and a brusque one meet exactly the same wall, for exactly the same reason, and neither of them has done anything wrong by arriving at it.

The tell

You can usually see the transaction being attempted in the structure of the message. Three paragraphs of warmth, then a request, then a line acknowledging that it might not be answerable, phrased in a way that suggests it might be if the warmth landed.

Nobody is offended by this and no note is made of it. The reply simply answers the address, the hour, the length and the figure, and leaves the rest alone. But it is worth naming, because guests who do it often believe they have failed at something and try again with more warmth, which does not help and does add ten minutes.

What actually reads as courteous here

Writing as though the person on the other side has other things to do. A full address the first time, with a floor and a room number. One hour rather than a range of four. A clear yes or no about whether this is a first booking. A sentence about the street door if it locks.

Those are dull and they are noticed far more than a compliment is, because each of them removes a question somebody would otherwise have to ask. The guests who get answered inside two minutes all write this way, and their messages would not win any prizes for charm.

Courtesy in the room, which is a different animal

Once she has arrived, manners matter enormously, and for a reason that has nothing to do with unlocking anything. An hour between two people who have not met goes better when one of them has made the room easy to be in, has a clear head, uses ordinary words and does not treat a goodbye as a negotiation.

That is worth doing because of what it is, not because of what it might buy. Anybody doing it as an investment will be disappointed, and the disappointment will show, which rather defeats the exercise.

The overcorrection

There is an opposite failure worth mentioning. Some guests, having read a page like this one, decide that warmth is pointless and write like a purchase order. That is not required either, and an hour spent with somebody determinedly silent is harder work than an hour with somebody chatty.

The target is ordinary. Speak the way you would speak to anybody who has just arrived at your door on a professional footing. Not performed, not clipped, not apologetic, not knowing.

The short version

Be pleasant because it makes the evening better. Be specific because it makes the booking faster. Do not confuse the two, and do not spend the first as though it were the second. Nothing on this site is behind a phrase, a tone or a password, and the people who look hardest for one are the only people who ever have trouble here.

A last word on flattery aimed at a profile rather than at a booking. Compliments about her photographs, sent before any arrangement exists, are the version of this that lands least well, because they arrive attached to nothing and ask to be answered by somebody who is not there. If you like what you read in a profile, the way to say so is to book her. That is the compliment this arrangement is built to receive.