Nice To Meet You, Limpy

So over the last week I've had the opportunity to meet a couple of new folks and run into some other familiar folks. I've been shaking a lot of hands.

I'm from the firm handshake school. Not knuckle crushing, but firm with a confident look in the eye and a 'nice to meet you.' This is what a good handshake should be. Anything in the vicinity will do for me, but I really put a lot of stock in the handshake when I meet people. It speaks to their intention, their confidence, their dependability.

The preponderance of this last week's handshakes have been either the limp fish variety or that finger tip thing that leaves you feeling as if the other individual really didn't want to touch you.

One in particular was a new experience for me in the bad handshake department. It was from a female. A bit older than me. I was dreading the handshake, but hoping she'd redeem my faith in well-educated, professionals when she hesitantly extended her paw curled such that it was impossible to grasp her hand properly. I ended up sort of shaking her curled fingers.

Now, before you ask if she was perhaps deformed, I will say that she wasn't as I watched her eat her lunch with the non-deformed, fully functional hand just moments after the crap-assed handshake she threw at me.

So, I ask, what is up with people who don't/can't/won't shake someone's hand properly?

My grandfather taught me how to shake hands. I suppose that's a little odd considering he taught me to shake hands like men shake hands and he's southern and what little there was about kissing ladies' hand's was more of a joke. I suppose he taught me to shake hands because he was also teaching my brothers. We were a unit, the three of us, inseparable when we were young. Small digression, back to the subject...

Obviously it bothers me that in a professional setting, people still don't know proper handshaking etiquette. It's just not that hard in a business setting. You just shake hands, no special rules unless it's just a terrible inconvenience for one or both parties and then, you don't.

I do have to say though, in social situations, it's very nice for a fine southern gentleperson to revert to the older custom of kissing this lady's hand.