Savoir Faire

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Savoir Faire = french infinitive verbs Savoir=to know; Faire=to do; together the phrase literally means "knowing what to do" (in any given situation). James Bond 007 had oodles of it - the late Alex Trebek likewise. how many WPers here feel THEY TOTALLY LACK in Savoir Faire? IOW, always a "deer in the headlights" with no deliberative cognitions at the ready, ever? NEVER with a proper comeback? always behind the 8-ball? ever and ever the fool? :dunce:

If I haven't been in a situation before I get very flustered and have no idea what to do, and sometimes even in situations I'm used to. I'm always a "deer in the headlights".

From an early age I used to do a lot of watching others which gave me a knowledge of what to do. For the first three years in school at playtime I did not play much as most of the time I would go to a corner and watch. It took a long time before I started to play like the others did. I had to watch. Learn. Take in information. Assess. See what is good and what is not so good.

The times I have done well is when I have had a set of rules to go by. I am a sticker for the rules, but I realize that on rare occasions when rules do not fit the situations that they were written for, I can bend the rules to fit so I am good like this, but I do need to know the rules in the first place for me to function. Yes, I can adapt and modify rules where applicable if the situation does not directly tally with the rules. (Inhave had to learn this early on to be able to function). During my time on the railway I picked up on flaws in the railway rule book and was able to bring them to the attention either directly or indirectly of those who could do something about them.
Once I had made a country wide rule book change because a train driver from another depot who had a grudge against all staff from my depot tried to catch me out and report me so I recited the rules regarding the situation word for word and he went off in a bit of a mood. He complained back at his depot to try to get me in trouble and no one could do a thing, but they later re-wrote the entire page of the rule book over it which I had no objection. (It had been one of those things that staff had assumed that people should abide accordingly but in reality there was no rule to abide by in that specific situation so I had ignored the implied rules and had gone about my business without complying to these implied rules as it was perfectly safe to do so in this situation. The driver had tried to say I was breaking the rules when I had specifically quoted him word for word what the rulebook said where in no way did it say I had to do what he said in the specific situation. If it had happened in other areas he would have been right but it wasn't in those other areas.

A friend of mine was a trackworker.... I mentioned to him a situation that the rulebook stated that all railway staff must do in a certain situation, that directly conflicted with another rule that was written for their safety. I pointed it out to him, and he realized that for years staff had put themselves in direct danger in following this rule. He then took it further and had the rule books changed. The rulebooks had been followed like this putting staff in this potentially harmful situation for a great many years and I noticed that staff had been following these rules directly and it was only by chance that the senario had never happened where someone was hurt. Thankfully the railway is very safety concious and is readilly willing to listen to any staff regardless of stature who can suggest things to improve the safety.

I view myself as a fairly competent, practical-minded person. I can't say I always know what to do in any situation, but I'm able to take a stab at most tasks, with a good success rate. In fact given enough time, motivation, and appropriate resources, there isn't much I can't do.

Things get a little murkier in the world of bureaucracy and convention, because the goal there seems to be detached from common sense and real things, and attached to figments of other people's imaginations, and the quality of my results are judged by others who might not be at all transparent about how they calculate my score.

I haven’t a trace of it. Oftentimes I haven’t even fully processed a situation before it’s too late for any kind of useful reaction.

i couldn't properly fill out a checkbook until i was an adult. i still don't know how to properly tip in restaurants? dickering with car dealers? fuggedaboudit!

I'll take the chocolate ice cream. Hagen Dass please.

^^^yeh i useta like that stuff. too rich and caloric for me, though. gain weight just by lookin' at the stuff sittin' there in the freezer section. in the supermarket, i wander the aisles, despite being armed with shopping list, trying to find stuff that other people do in 1/10th the time. i feel like i'm chopped liver all too often.

Just go with it.
Learn French later

Je sais écrire et parler un peu de français maintenant [i already speak and write a bit of french]. what i need is more french and at least un peu de SAVOIR FAIRE.

I have been pretty smooth on some occasions, but not as a rule. A nice woman asked me if I'd like to go for coffee some time, and since I drink water, I just said no politely. Years later, I realized that she wanted to talk.

why can't they just come right out and say "CAN WE TALK?!"

That format filters out the non-savants.

That's easy - it's completely up to you. Big tip, medium tip, small tip, no tip at all. They all work. Unless you feel it necessary to follow conventions, or you suspect a low tip will cause them to spit in your dinner if you go there again (unlikely). But again, it's not too hard. About 10% ought to do the trick. My preferred fix for the whole problem is to avoid restaurants. They're not essential for human happiness, and the food's cheaper if you prepare it yourself.

This depends on geography. In the US, servers starve without tips over 10%. In some other countries, a tip is definitely an insult.
BTW, in Canada, where 10% is common, when I was driving Taxi, the servers were the highest tippers - even better than airline pilots.
Agreed that food service is a very bad idea both economically and nutritionally, and leads to more food waste overall. Sometimes that even extends to food at home that was bought with the intention to cook.

If I were a low-paid waiter I'd be scoffing the uneaten food. Mind you, what a horrible job if they don't pay you enough to live on. Makes me wonder if simply eating at such places is encouraging the exploitation, though the ethics of it is complicated.