The Handshake Buffer Zone
January 26th, 2004
Informally, a greeting handshake is pretty much standard when seeing someone for the first time in a while. You’d also expect friendly handshakes on major public holidays and significant life events, like New Year - or the birth of ones first male heir.
Conversely, it’s not deemed necessary to shake hands with, say, friends at work every morning, and a second consecutive night in the pub with the same people is not usually opened with an outbreak of energetic handshaking.
But there’s a grey area between the two extremes, when there’s no clear mandate to shake. Where’s the watershed? What time has to elapse before handshaking becomes a social requirement once again? What, in short, is the handshake buffer period?
The social awkwardness of a misjudged handshake initiation should not be underestimated. It takes a lot for a man to touch another man, and woe betide anyone who instigates that contact unnecessarily.
Get it wrong the other way, though, and it’s worse. Someone offers their hand when you’re not expecting it and you’re suddenly required to extend an ill-prepared paw of your own. We know what happens when there’s been no chance to mentally prime for a shake, and it usually involves a limp fish sensation for him and a crushed set of metacarpals for you.
Or is it just me?
There’s got to be a better way, but for once the internet seems to have let me down (why, internet? Why?!)