If I want eating-at-people’s-houses events to happen in general, I can subsidize the best cook in my social circle instead of cooking myself.
You know, this seems socially naive to me, in a way characteristic of ideallistic young introverts. People do not usually respond well if you offer to pay for stuff they would otherwise enjoy doing for free, under the right circumstances (such as reciprocal dinner invites).
But I may be wrong, give it a try and report on the results, one of us will probably learn something.
People do not usually respond well if you offer to pay for stuff they would otherwise enjoy doing for free, under the right circumstances
I think you’re right, and I think the reason you’re right is that paying a friend to cook for you introduces a social relation—and, importantly, an implicit power relation—that wasn’t there before, and that people tend to be cautious about adopting those sorts of things. If you want to pay the best cook in your social circle to cook for group events, all of a sudden that person is no longer some random friend; they’ve become your employee. Which is, among other things, a status move and one that creates asymmetric obligations.
There are ways of exchanging goods and services in most social circles without creating status implications or inflexible long-term obligations, but they’re usually somewhat less conducive to ongoing arrangements. Probably the best in this situation would be to create some sort of regular social event that requires expenditure on your part, and ask your friend to do the cooking as part of a general division of resources. For example: “Want to start going fishing every couple of weeks? I’ll drive if you cook.” Usually you’d want to do a trial run first, of course.
You know, this seems socially naive to me, in a way characteristic of ideallistic young introverts. People do not usually respond well if you offer to pay for stuff they would otherwise enjoy doing for free, under the right circumstances (such as reciprocal dinner invites).
But I may be wrong, give it a try and report on the results, one of us will probably learn something.
I think you’re right, and I think the reason you’re right is that paying a friend to cook for you introduces a social relation—and, importantly, an implicit power relation—that wasn’t there before, and that people tend to be cautious about adopting those sorts of things. If you want to pay the best cook in your social circle to cook for group events, all of a sudden that person is no longer some random friend; they’ve become your employee. Which is, among other things, a status move and one that creates asymmetric obligations.
There are ways of exchanging goods and services in most social circles without creating status implications or inflexible long-term obligations, but they’re usually somewhat less conducive to ongoing arrangements. Probably the best in this situation would be to create some sort of regular social event that requires expenditure on your part, and ask your friend to do the cooking as part of a general division of resources. For example: “Want to start going fishing every couple of weeks? I’ll drive if you cook.” Usually you’d want to do a trial run first, of course.
Fair enough. Instead of subsidizing I can offer to take care of logistics if they take care of cooking.
I would invite people over and pay for takeout rather than cooking, if I couldn’t cook.
Qiaochu_Yuan’s social circle and your social circle may (or may not) be too different for what one will learn to apply to the other.