Corporate handshake from family member has weirded me out.

jonnyburgo

Not sure why this is preoccupying me but it is..

Was at my Nans funeral a few weeks ago in Salford, most my family in Salford are kind of rogue-ish, some have done spells in prison and had questionable pasts, lots of nice cars with private plates and chunky gold bracelets whilst having "undefined" dayjobs.

 I don't see them from one year to the next to be honest, usually weddings and funerals. When I do see them though they are genuinely warm and friendly ,lots of hugs and kisses, lots of drink and fags, reminiscing about our childhood together the usual. Except one cousin who has done very well for himself down the more conventional route, he's a director at a big London finance firm and is about 15 years my junior, he's married to a millionairess has a London pad overlooking the Thames and a big place in Kent. I used to get on well with him as I guess we were both a bit "outside" the other lot (I don't want that to sound snobby).

 I haven't seen him for about 4 years. Anyway when I saw him he literally strutted over to me as if about to seal a multi million pound deal and gave me this perfect teeth smile and a ridiculously firm handshake whilst fixing me with his eyes in a really cheesy politician like manner. It just felt weird and I almost wanted to laugh and say "what the fuck was that?, I'm your cousin not a client". 

As I say I'm not sure why it bothered me, I don't have any resentment to him being rich and powerful in his field, he's done that off his own back. I think it was more the fact that I felt like I don't know him anymore and he has well and truly disappeared up his own arse.

Bit of a weird one I know...Anyone have similar experiences with family?

Jez6345789

I have a similar cousin I grew up with through childhood and teens and he is now this super sales director and partner and done well for himself. But talks to everyone even his 90 year old Mum like he is making some big pitch it’s constant and in a family social situation seems totally OTT.

Same with my sister she has done very well these days as a consultant to big business and government and she constantly talks to us in management speak. When my old mum was alive even taking her shopping  I asked her did it go ok with mum, who had Alzheimer’s at the time and could be difficult and you would get stuff, yes think we rounded all those corners or some other management speak for success.

i think some people just merge fully into their new reality and they become it and in the end most of the old person you knew just is gone.

skunkwerx

Yeah. 

Im 30 now and only met my family outside my immediate family this year. 

They ranged from snobbish to downright  Cuntish. I was immediately aware I was not respected due to my job. 

I’d have rather met a sandpaper dildo... with my bum. 

vale

i cut my family infinite slack really. because i'm only ever going to have one. even if they annoy me or let me down or ignore me for ages. they know me better & love me more than anyone else. even if i don't see them for years & even if we row like cats & dogs.
the bottom line is that we shared a long difficult childhood together & that's a kind of sacred bond.

so... i suppose i'm projecting my relationship with my family onto you and yours with this advice, but i would say never be too quick to judge or dismiss your own family over a little thing.
if i was in your situation i would probably just shrug & totally let that one go, on the basis that this is a person who obviously has to do over-confident alpha-male 'city handshakes' with people he has no meaninful connection with all day long, every day of the week. to the point it's habit.

so it may well be that he is actually just totally out of practice with the habit of shaking hands with someone outside of that corporate universe that he cares about. in a flash second he reaches for your hand and muscle memory guides him. especially in a stressful situation (like a funeral), a brain can really easily slip into auto.
if he is someone focused on preserving a successful image around your family, rather than risk a fumble or an awkward moment he may stress & autoplay safe, but later reflect that he might have shown you a bit more affection.

maybe if you and he were away from the crowd & just having drinks together he would relax more and open up. if you had a bond once it's probably still there somewhere.

anyway, i would say don't damn him over a little thing like that.
your sensitivity about a seemingly small thing may even be an insight into how much you actually do feel for him. you fear losing him on some level. so that's to ask yourself in private.

but if so, consider calling him once the funeral & stresses are passed and trying to reconnect away from the crowd.

jonnyburgo

Wise words brother, a healthy perspective.

Sporky

What Vale said, and also funerals can be odd things especially for some people. He might have been particularly anxious, and used his standard greeting as a simple reflex or because it turns the situation into one he's previously solved. 

richardhomer

I’d prepared a retaliatory PowerPoint presentation about how it made you feel in readiness for your next meeting....  

stickyfiddle

Wis for @sporky and @vale ;

Funerals are weird, but if you're used to a corporate setting then greeting people with a smile and handshake is something you do multiple times every day - it becomes muscle memory. Combined with the weird-funeral-feeling for both of you it's not necessarily surprising that it felt a bit impersonal. 

Call him in a few days and suggest going for a drink

ToneControl

I think he is just immersed in a world where he acts like that all day for work, and forgot how to switch it off. He'd mostly be spending time with people from that world outside the office too. I'd just write it off to him "going native", but in the opposite sense to what people usually mean with that phrase.

I had a senior management job once, and had to make instant decisions frequently to delegate tasks to many people, and found myself unintentionally doing this at home with my Mrs! This was not popular at home. That's one of the reasons I was not keen to stay on that career route.

Brize

ToneControl said:

I think he is just immersed in a world where he acts like that all day for work, and forgot how to switch it off.

Wis'd. I remember when I started my business and I was pitching all the time. We were in the pub and met a couple that were friends of my wife's. I struck up a conversation with the chap while the two girls were chatting and I had to check myself when I realised that I was on auto-pilot and speaking to this guy like he was a potential business contact.

I guess we're all actors to some degree.

viz

As he approached with his open hand I’d have got my own hand ready to do a fist pump with him and when he reacted and curled his own hand into a ball I’d have then grabbed it and shouted cabbage. 

Sorry to hear about your Nan dude. 

dindude

Just probably hadn’t switched off from work persona, with a little bit of flash/proudness of what he has achieved thrown in, as in “this is who am now”. 

Deadman

He sounds like Gareth Cheesman.

Sorry about your Nan.

Chalky

I doubt he is acting. He's just a far more confident person now, used to shaking hands with people. Shaking hands with friends was normal in London when I lived there.  As you go north, shaking hands seems to be a lost skill - I remember meeting senior folks at Asda HQ and their handshakes were like squeezing used teabags.

Its funny that firm handshakes are seen as odd despite their history here, whereas fistbumps are seen as ok even though doing them is an imitation of a Brooklyn teenage black guy.  Why do northerners not like firm handshakes?

spark240

On the other side of the coin....I happened to attend an event years ago and met the Director General of the BBC, ..he had no clue who I was but spent a fair time just talking “Stuff”...a celebrity of the time came along and the DG said, “I’ll be with you in a few minutes “, a very nice guy, sadly gone now.

LuttiS

I always found hand shaking odd.. i can understand in a business setting, it's the "done" thing.. but it weirded me out when i'd meet friends etc and they all insist on shaking hands like a chump. 

While we're on it.. the amount of hand shaking and bottom slapping on the apprentice pisses me off too

Sorry bout you're nan, but i think @vale nailed it - funeral is an stressful setting, autpilot engage!

zepp76

I'm a stickler for a good firm handshake, there is nothing worse than shaking hands with someone who has a clammy limp handshake, it creeps me out.

olafgarten

I don't like shaking hands outside of work, with friends/family it's either a wave or a hug depending on how close they are. 

Grunfeld

I do not like handshakes at all.  It's a vector for the transmission of disease.

As for family, I think the thing families can be really good at is when they function as a support group you can always rely on.

We are social animals and that "support group" relationship is something we generally do better having rather than missing. 

The problem with families is they can be full of unreliable individuals so at that point I think, well what is their bloody function then? 

underdog

I find a firm handshake rather sad, like a male dominance ritual that should have died out decades ago. A greeting is suppose to be something that says happy to meet you, not look at me I could kill you if I needed to.

guitarfishbay

underdog said:

I find a firm handshake rather sad, like a male dominance ritual that should have died out decades ago. A greeting is suppose to be something that says happy to meet you, not look at me I could kill you if I needed to.

Have you been to the US? I’ve met women with firmer handshakes than men in the UK.

I don’t believe in the whole ‘you can judge a man by his handshake’ thing. What correlation does how hard you squeeze someone’s hand have with anything?

Sorry to hear about your Nan Jonny.