Eating your way out of a polite kill: Answering “What do you do?” at US dinner parties
Answering "What do you do?" at US dinner parties is not as simple as giving your title and job description. A 190 feet steel-framed glass skylight in New York Penn Station is proof.
Let’s first take a look at the lyrics of “The Room Where it Happens” in the original Broadway play “Hamilton” in 2010.
Hamilton: Decisions are happening over dinner
Burr: Two Virginians and an immigrant walk into a room
Burr and Ensemble: Diametrically opposed, foes. They emerge with a compromise, having opened doors that were … Previously closed.
Burr: The immigrant emerges with unprecedented financial power. A system he can shape however he wants. The Virginians emerge with the nation’s capital. And here’s the pièce de résistance:
Burr and Ensemble: No one else was in the room where it happened … No one really knows how the game is played (Game is played). The art of the trade. How the sausage gets made.
It’s not just the American forefathers who made important decisions over dinner.
Dinner gathering is a place of polite kills.
Here’s what I mean.
When I first moved to the US, I noticed something interesting: people really converse over dinner. I know that sounds like it should be obvious. But it really isn’t. Dinner where I grew up—was fast. Sometimes no one spoke. Not because we didn’t like each other. But because the objective was simple: to get sustenance.
In the US, the conversation is the bread. Whereas the bread itself is like the object of conversation.
Here, if you just met someone and they have you over for dinner, one of the first questions are:
“So, what do you do?”
Usually not a problem if your responsibility is fairly mainstream and easy to explain. Like a doctor. Or a lawyer. Or whatever else.
But what if you’re on the technical side of things—where your spouse doesn't even know exactly what you do with that fancy title every day?
Sometimes this question is sprung upon you when you first enter the dinner host’s house. As you’re taking off your shoes. Before you’ve even committed their names to memory.
In the US, there’s an unsaid yet running belief that: first impression matters. Perhaps this is why some houses in the US have grand spaces with skylights.
Even train stations that used to bear much of the arrivals’ first impression load—invest heavily on skylights.
Skylights look stunning. No doubt. But it’s a bit deeper than that. Skylights affect our impression. Glare and illuminance matters. There’s a sense of wholesomeness when the skylight lets in light.
Even as we scramble a coherent answer for the inevitable question: “What do you do?”
Skylights are so important that Washington State Legislature said:
For buildings with single story enclosed spaces greater than 2,500 square feet (232 m2) in floor area that are directly under a roof and have a ceiling height greater than 15 feet (4572 mm) for no less than 75 percent of the ceiling area, these single-story spaces shall be provided with skylights and daylight responsive controls in accordance with Section C405.2.4.
It’s almost like the world secretly acknowledges that, in any place of gathering, interrogations will take place. To sort out our family. And our enemy.
The rise of the story-topping battle at US dinner parties, why no one is listening, and ways to get heard
The seat at the table is a place where a decision, sometimes to a lethal degree, is delivered through a series of polite inquiries. Or worse, through a story-topping exercise.
I didn’t know about this term until I’ve been to a good dozen dinner conversations. Notice what happens when you share a story in a US dinner gathering. The next person who talks barely asks a follow up question.
Here’s how it usually goes:
Thalia: You know, that restaurant is no good. I ate there the other night and got really sick.
Person 1: I got sick two months ago at the burger place up the road.
Person 2: Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on. Burger never got me. But I got sick once from that breakfast place.
Oddly, this is how most conversations go in the US. We deliver a fact. Then our conversation mates deliver another. And someone else delivers another.
Not one of us, myself included, remembers to ask the first person deeper questions.
Which restaurant is it?
Did you order your regular?
When was this?
What do you think got you?
Will you ever go back?
I wonder if we’re worried about sounding nosy. Maybe we’re also aware that piercing questions—no matter how polite the delivery—can cut. They may even kill. But …
Cutting is where incision becomes a decision.
It’s where we make or break relationships.
Merlin and King Arthur of the Round Table know this. Even Alexander Hamilton knew this.
Which is why, when someone asks “What do you do?” in between mouthfuls, we perk up. We know there’s a responsibility to deliver the best answer.
Answering “What do you do?” at dinner parties in the US
When all heads turn to you, the momentary silence can get uncomfortable.
It’s even worse when there’s more than four people at the table. Somehow, the conversation starts to turn into a performance. We have to speak up. We have to answer loudly. In the US, we’re encouraged to take pride in our accolades. Many other cultures can’t say the same.
In places around the world, bragging is looked down upon. So imagine trying to reverse years of habit in front of people you just met. Especially when there are more than a few people in the room.
“A four-person conversation may be special because it is the largest conversation size with more possible dyads in which the self is involved (inclusive dyads) than possible dyads in which the self is not involved (exclusive dyads)” - Jaimie Krems. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 40, Issue 2, March 2019, Pages 140-147
Psychologically, it keeps the momentum up. It’s no different than sleeping in a big open room. It feels less grounded. Less intimate. And in some ways, more unnerving.
I never thought about the legs of the table. So I wonder if it would help when I stand under the spotlighting skylight and hear,
“So what is it that you do exactly?”
You could throw an answer like: I’m a mechanical engineer.
Or you could specify with: I research solar cells’ application in medical hardwares.
Or you could stay vague with: Currently I’m a research faculty at the university, but I’m leading a study on tectonic “so on and so forth” …
I’m going to stop right here. Because as interested as anyone can ever pretend to be with all the jargons, unless they’re already in THAT field—they’re immediately lost. And we’ve lost them, too. I’ve been guilty of being both lost, and having lost others here.
Maybe I just need better education.
But maybe I’m just like any other person who didn’t sign up for a crash course in a technicality I know I’ll never master.
I wonder if similar thoughts go through the minds of America’s forefathers.
Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Madison, on the night of June 20th, 1790, had to decide where the permanent US capitol should be. According to Jefferson, Hamilton was “haggard and dejected beyond comparison.”
I’m sure these three men, just like any human, really only care for their wants. And I’m sure they would’ve likely gone past the introductory question of “What do you do?” Their historic Dinner Table bargain, would’ve likely involved questions like:
“What can you do for us?” or,
“What do you want to do?” and,
“What will you do?
But the gist is the same. All eyes on the interrogated.
No one knew what really happened. Nor do we know the specifics of what’s being negotiated, compromised, and given up. Personal or otherwise.
Questions were asked. Answers were given. And a consensus was created.
Potomac is where the US Capitol will stand.
A singular dinner party can do that. A round table can do that. A table setting under a skylight can do that. And a thoughtful answer—can break the weight of the unknown.
At dinner, questions that were adrift, are now ashore. Even between the spoonfuls of the savory and the bitter. Even if the final answer to any of our questions are harsh. And even if, during this interchange, we are the fated recipient or the burdened deliverer—of a polite kill.
A boss delivering bad news that you’re laid off. A loved one wanting to part ways from you. A last meal before a good friend moves away forever. Or a judgment of your social standing in the covert question of “What do you do?”
It’s almost brutal. We aren’t literally eating each other alive. And yet, our questions, and the implication of what we want, have finality. It’s like the food chain never left our inner code. And it breaks into our kitchen door at the time we most repress it.
Cannibalism is grisly. But so is the real intent of our questioning.
“Dudley made no attempt to hide or gloss over the sad fate of Richard Parker. He was a forthright, honest man and to his mind killing and consuming Parker was a tragic necessity.” - on the fate of Mignonette crew History Extra.
How did something so simple and necessary—like eating—become a gruesome bloodbath?
The kill instinct has always been there all along.
And just like in the food chain, the only way to survive a polite kill is to have the emotional intelligence to deliver a generous yet rounded answer. One that is not malicious, yet still conversationally giving. Unyielding, yet benevolent at the same time.
For more on surviving and answering a polite kill when you hear “What do you do?”
Subscribe to get updated when next posts are published