Q - 5 irritating Questions that people ask and how to tackle them!

Our lives are never private. There are people all around us trying to poke their noses into everything we do or don’t. They are so interested to know every little thing that goes on in our lives that it becomes a pain answering them.  

Are you free? they will ask. Your time is never your own. You will be expected to run errands, complete their child’s project, or whatever. But if you refuse to help, saying you have your own work to complete, they have the next question ready.

How much do you earn? they will want to know. Hah! They really expect you to tell them the figures? Don’t answer it, but if you did, well, God save you. If they think you are earning well, they will pop the next question.

Why are you single? What a waste of your life, if you aren’t yet married by the ‘correct’ age that society has set for you. Perhaps they will give you a cursory look and try to reason why marriage has evaded you.  

Why don’t you do something about your colour/ size? Poor souls. Don’t they know that one can do absolutely nothing about the colour of your skin, height and err…weight?  But when you eventually get married, you know what they will ask next...

When will you have a child? As if having a child is the sole reason why people get married!

After having given you the headache of a marriage and a child and seeing you run around like a headless chicken, will they get off your back? No! They will come back to question #1.  

Are you free?

So, here are 5 ways to tackle these irritating questions.

Use humour.

Find a funny way to reply back to irritating questions. If someone’s pestering you with the why aren’t you married question, roll your eyes and say, ‘Oh my, are you jealous?’, or wink and say, ‘Amn’t I lucky?’, or better, ‘Because I love bread pakoda more’!

Ask another question.

It always irritates people when you answer a question with another question. If someone’s asks, how much do you earn, say, ‘Why is that important to you?’, or ask them the same question, ‘How much do you earn?’ or even tongue-in-cheek, ‘Why, aren’t you paid enough?’

Be vague.

Giving vague answers which give out nothing about what they want to know is a clever way of getting them off your back. If someone asks, ‘What price did you sell your house for?’  say, ‘Even a million bucks would not be enough payment for this lovely home,’ or ‘Money is just a number, can it buy happiness?’

Give them an irrelevant and lengthy explanation.

If people have come looking for spice, give it to them. Take them round and round in circles, giving them all sorts of irrelevant information and take up so much of their time that they will think twice before asking personal questions again.

Refuse to answer.

Just refuse to answer. People aren’t expecting you to refuse to answer them. Knock them over with a refusal, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to answer that.’ Simple.

What's your trick?