'Captain Boredom' to the Rescue Again!

A recent letter to Miss Manners yielded a couple of answers that fell within the bounds of etiquette, the preferred answer helping me see a new advantage of a strategy for dealing with difficult people I have discussed before. (That strategy is usually called "gray rock.")

The letter writer poses a question that comes with the complication that the difficult person is a neighbor. Thus, while a blunt affirmative might be an appropriate answer to Have I done something to offend you?, the writer seems to want an answer that better reduces future engagement with someone who won't be going away any time soon.

Miss Manners replies:

What you want is a way to make her leave you alone, which can be accomplished with your best look of deep concern and the return question of, "What ever would make you say that?" Then appear not to be paying too much attention when she answers, in the hope that she will review her own actions.

This is classic gray rock, and I agree with some of the commenters that someone as rude as that neighbor was would be unlikely to reflect on her actions.

That said, as someone who is more likely to just want to be done, I failed to appreciate an advantage that another commenter noted of the response:

MM's answer does not give the neighbor anything to manipulate the LW with. It does not give her an opening for excuses, or arguments, or lectures. It provides nothing juicy to gossip about, nothing to use to smear the LW to their mutual acquaintances, nothing to start a feud about.

It presents a wall of indifference with no explanation - a smooth surface which can't be climbed or broken through. Eventually the neighbor will retreat in puzzlement, with nothing to accuse the LW of except vague things like "she's cold" or "she's not a good neighbor".

The LW lives in this neighborhood, she does not want to make actual enemies, she just wants to disengage from the neighbor. [bold added]

This response is similar to what I'd do naturally, but after seeing the more blunt reply, I saw it as a bit of a toss-up, in part because I don't think about gossip very much.

That said, the situation that ultimately caused the letter-writer to inquire never would have happened to me. I would have had no trouble stopping the initial boundary violation at all, because things like that raise my hackles too much.

I nevertheless am grateful to have learned of another of Captain Boredom's superpowers.

-- CAV