Tuesday, Mar. 29, 2005 - 1:03 a.m.
Let's talk about handshakes.....'cause I've been doing a lot of handshaking lately. This is one of the side effects to temping I suppose.
For some reason, the place I'm working right now (The Salvation Army), they keep introducing me to everyone, regardless of whether or not I'll probably ever have to deal with them. And anyone that even passes me in the hall introduces themselves to me. I know I shouldn't complain about people being friendly, but it is really catching me off guard, and slightly weirding me out.
Either way, the constant introductions led to constant handshakes.
So, here's the thing with handshakes, they show a lot about you. I like to think I have a decent handshake. I'm pretty confident so I have a firm grasp but I'm not trying to prove anything so I don't squeeze the hell out of people's hands. I don't hold for too long or let go to quickly as though I'm afraid to touch them. It's just a generally quick grasp and shake to say hi.
So far here I've maybe had one decent, normal handshake. I'm encountering two very annoying patterns of handshakes with some extras thrown in for extra annoyance.
Annoying handshake one = "limp hand syndrome." Usually this is the one I get from women, I hate to say. They present their hand to me and then it's like they completely lose the ability to use any of the muscles. Their fingers don't bend around my hand, their wrist is all lose. I feel as though if I apply any pressure at all I might hurt them because this conveys to me fragility for some reason. Extras thrown into this one are often ice cold or clammy hand (also known as "touch of death hand") and that vaguely insulting manor of pulling away from the handshake too quickly. Add them up and it's almost like you're shaking hands with a zombie.
But then there's annoying handshake number two, which I seem to mostly get from guys. "I will crush your hand handshake", aka "I'm stronger than you are" or "note I'm the one in charge." I adopt these kind of names for it because that's what it always says to me. Whenever a guy grabs my hand and the knuckles start to bend in on each other, it implies to me that this guy is trying to prove something...or he's so used to trying to prove it that he doesn't realize that he's crushing my hand. This is often accompanies by annoying extra "never letting go" where the pain just lasts that much longer.
I remember once watching a show about how the Japenese take classes to learn the proper way to bow to each other (maybe it was just people in business, but the point still works). That is their form of handshake. Maybe we should adopt something similar.
