How to Offer Help on Thanksgiving

Video Transcript

"Hello. I'm Matt Cail and on behalf of Expert Village, I'm going to show you today how to survive a big family Thanksgiving. Another tip is understanding when "Thanks" or "No Thanks" indeed means just that. Wow, what do I mean by that. What I mean by that is take this scenario: somebody's washing dishes after the big Thanksgiving dinner. You go up to them and say "Hey, can I help you with that?" They cheerfully look at you and go "Oh no, that's alright. No, thanks." Now, in that situation, the person actually means that and you are cool. You are off the hook. OR, they may just be being gracious and really deep down, they are a little bit miffed that they are having to do all these dang dishes and nobody is really helping them out. It's amazing how many people out there do not know how to accept help. So, it's kind of good to take a read of the situation. Maybe offer twice. You know, "hey, can I help you with those dishes?" "Oh, no. No, thanks." "No, really, are you okay doing those dishes?" And it's kind of like, you know, "ask twice" is my general rule. What will this do? This will avoid a lot of people who hold secret grudges about "every single year I have to do so much and people don't really help." Because even though people don't always know how to accept help, they will still be annoyed that they are not getting it. It's just an interesting point of human nature. So, when in doubt, ask for helping somebody at least twice. Then, after that, leave them alone. You know, you don't want to...maybe they really do want to do it by themselves and that's fine, too. But, just to be safe, ask them twice to be sure. "