Overcoming Politeness
Or when to keep your mouth shut.
Just wanted to throw out a few scenarios for others' opinions on the matter and let you add your own.
Sometimes the scales of politeness are shaky as in what action becomes the lesser evil or the most helpful. Say you have a customer in line with one boob completely out of her shirt, do you let her know so she is less embarrassed at the end of her long exposed the day and in front of other customers or do you keep your mouth shut and save the present embarrassment. True story and it wasn't one of those that you'd like to help her balance out to your own benefit either.
Less extreme is someone's zipper down. It just happened this morning, a wide gaping hole into the window of fat white pantidom. If it was a guy, I'd have no problem telling him, but this was a woman I didn't know well. Now she'll continue her day with a little extra breeze in her britches until she figures out it wasn't just a result of her new Twilight book/wall poster combo purchase and then has to horrifically play through her mind how many errands ago her last zip up was.
Another is the instant honesty scenario yielding long lasting white lies.
Simple is when someone calls you by the incorrect name. Not generally a big deal, you can answer to it easily enough as they've known you for a while and you'd rather save them the trouble. Surely it was a one time thing and you were nice to have done it. I didn't correct a coworker at a large employee based place once and ended up working right next to him later. I answered to the name "John" for the next two years because at that point it was too late in my mind to correct.
6 years after leaving that employment, I almost had to pretend I had gone deaf in a horrible firework accident after he had spotted me from behind in Costco and kept yelling "John! John! Hey John!" with no reaction from me.
The unwanted gift scenario plays along the same lines. Sure telling grandpa you loved the gift will make him happy in the short run, but 30 years later he is still spending his "very fixed income" on hand crafted taxedermied beetles dressed as tiny confederate soldiers.
Now if you know his joy in the giving overpasses anything else, then by all means, buy a back lit glass case and get to displaying. But maybe the whole time he's been like, "Wtf's wrong with this sick kid, it was a fun one time gift and now I'm spending all my pension money funding a wall of General Sydell Stinkbeets and and Corporal Waldine Weevals."