Have a good rest of the day! (picky language filter)

January 14, 2018 4:30 AM

I hear "Have a good rest of the day" (/week/weekend) all the time now and it makes me nuts. "Enjoy the rest of your day" (which has essentially the same meaning) doesn't bother me nearly as much. "Have a good day" also doesn't bother me - it's the combination of "have a good" and the remaining part of the day that rubs me wrong. My questions: (1) Where did "Have a good rest of the [time period]" come from and (2) Why does "Enjoy the rest of your day" seem so much more reasonable to me?
posted by 2 cats in the yard to Society & Culture (21 answers total)

Is it the grammar that seems to bother you, or the sentiment?
posted by dayintoday at 4:40 AM on January 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

(2) Why does "Enjoy the rest of your day" seem so much more reasonable to me?

The only rationale I can come up with is that "Have a good rest of the day" reifies the remaining part of the day into an entity, due to the definite article, and, for whatever reason, this offends your sense of ontological parsimony.

But really I don't know if there's a reason. "Have a good one" enrages me to the point where it can kind of spoil a good mood; that is unfortunate, since it is popular. I'm perfectly willing to throw you to the wolves if "Have a good rest of the day" replaces it. Does either of us have a better case? I doubt it.
posted by thelonius at 4:42 AM on January 14, 2018 [6 favorites]

1.) It comes from the same place as saying "absolutely" instead of 'yes,' which is to say an ersatz idea about authenticity, that somehow adding complication makes the speaker more sincere. I suspect it originates in the service/hospitality industries and is about attempting to make the customer feel particular and special without actually intruding.

2.) It does not seem more reasonable, it's just as bad and you are mistaken.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 4:47 AM on January 14, 2018 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: It's the grammer/phrasing. "Have a good day" or "Enjoy the rest of the day" don't bother me. Nor does "Have a good one," for that matter.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 4:49 AM on January 14, 2018

"rest of the day/rest of your day" to me is used when it's an in-between time, and it feels a little weird to use "have a good morning/afternoon/evening!"

Like when it's 11am, and not really morning, and not really afternoon. Or 4:00, when it's fairly late in the afternoon, but not yet evening. So, "rest of your day" seems more fitting.
posted by raztaj at 4:49 AM on January 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Any thoughts/info on the origin of this phrase? I think I've only heard it in the last few months.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 5:04 AM on January 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

I use it when getting my exhausted special-needs students into their parents’ hands at the end of the school day. I’m specifically referring to the stretch of time between pick up and bedtime, when everyone is tired and things often go wrong, when parents could maybe use a bit of goodwill. It just seems like a nicer thing to say than “Hope he doesn’t have a shrieking meltdown at dinner because you put the wrong kind of potatoes on the table! Good luck with that!” I don’t say “Enjoy the rest of your day,” because in this context it might be seen as sarcastic.

As for origin in my case, it sort of popped out awkwardly one afternoon when I realized I was trying to refer to both evening and afternoon.
posted by corey flood at 6:18 AM on January 14, 2018 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Not sure about the origin, but the reason it bothers you seems clear. It's because people always say "the rest," not "a rest," when talking about the remaining part of something. "The rest of the day" is a normal thing to say. "A rest of the day" or "a rest of the cookies" is not. "A good rest of the day" sounds weird because it's referring to a rest of the day, not the rest of the day.

This page talks about the history of "Have a nice day," also mentioning the variant "Have a good day." This page focuses on "Have a good one" but also talks about "Have a good day." "Have a nice day" was big starting in the 70's and I think it eventually came to seem so trite that people began preferring "Have a good day," which to my ears sounds a little more sincere.

It seems only natural that once people started saying "Have a good day" frequently, they would often find themselves saying it partway through the day and would feel it made more sense to wish that the rest of the person's day would be good, realizing that it was too late to do anything about the part that had already happened. I found this clip from Pretty Little Liars, released in 2010, where someone is saying, "Have a good rest of your day." So apparently people have been saying it at least for the last 8 years or so.
posted by Redstart at 6:24 AM on January 14, 2018 [10 favorites]

"Have a nice day" was big starting in the 70's and I think it eventually came to seem so trite that people began preferring "Have a good day," which to my ears sounds a little more sincere.

I can recall backlash to "Have a nice day!" starting up at once, when the phrase suddenly became current.
posted by thelonius at 6:34 AM on January 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

When I meet my husband for lunch in the middle of a workday, I say "have a good rest of the day" when he goes back to the office. I don't say "Enjoy the rest of your day" because, you know, it's work, he's not going to enjoy it. Why I don't just say "have a good afternoon" is a mystery to me. I never noticed the grammatical issue until reading this question, but now it does sound weird to me.
posted by Daily Alice at 7:08 AM on January 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I think Redstart has it re. the grammar and what bugs me about that particular phrase. Thank you! Thanks too for the attempts to find origin or earier usage. The info on the stackexchange page in particular was interesting.

Kudos to those who, like corey flood and Daily Alice, think through the actually meaning and don't want to use "good" when it's maybe not so appropriate.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 7:27 AM on January 14, 2018

Response by poster: (*"actual meaning," not "actually meaning." And I realized that Daily Alice thinks through the meaning in other ways than the word "good." But hopefully y'all know what I meant.)
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 7:58 AM on January 14, 2018

Have a good day is now considered trite and meaningless, so a new trite and meaningless phrase has taken hold. I've done a fair amount of customer service and you often need a phrase to move the close of the transaction along, and also to appear to be friendly, positive, and providing good service. I, too, dislike Have a good rest of the day, but it's a minor annoyance, like there now being way too many traffic signs with blinking lights, and the popularity of tarragon.
posted by theora55 at 8:24 AM on January 14, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: My issue is that it's a garden path sentence. "Have a good rest" is one thing "Have a good rest of the day" is another thing requiring the listener to back up, briefly, to parse it. Science says that we spend a tiny bit more processing power dealing with garden path sentences. It's possible you are reacting to this.
posted by jessamyn at 8:31 AM on January 14, 2018 [8 favorites]

I've been saying this for years, and I think I might have gotten it from a grandparent. We picked it up because it was fun to say -- it did that little unexpected thing of packaging "the rest of the day" together as a single entity. That it might cause listeners' brains to hiccup a tiny bit as they parsed this was probably considered a feature rather than a bug. But I remember this going back decades. I certainly don't think of it as unusual or off-putting at all today.
posted by Mothlight at 9:54 AM on January 14, 2018

I say this, and it’s slightly awkward in the sense that there’s no better word for “the rest of the day,” but I don’t have trouble parsing the phrase. It is weird because, as Redstart says, “the rest” always takes a definite article. It also doesn’t have a particularly good rhythm when said out loud; in “have a good [blank],” you’re used to hearing something short as the [blank], not a longer phrase.

I don’t change it up because the familiarity of “have a good [blank]” overrules the awkwardness of the phrase that goes in the blank. It’s a nearly automatic pleasantry. I don’t often say, for example, “enjoy your afternoon” or “I hope your morning goes well” or other sentences that “the rest of your day” would fit cleanly in.
posted by Metroid Baby at 10:34 AM on January 14, 2018

I hear, "Have a good rest-of-your-day!" when someone says this. It seems to me to say this clearly there should be a slight pause after the word good and then the remaining four word should be spoken faster than the first three so that they run into each.

You could say, "Hope the rest of your day goes well," if you had to express the same thought with different words.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:46 PM on January 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

I say this, and it’s slightly awkward in the sense that there’s no better word for “the rest of the day,”

"Have a good remainder of the day"?
posted by tenderly at 2:04 PM on January 14, 2018

I think "have a good rest of your day" is a subtle way of saying that I am not going to be able to get back to you today if you have more questions/follow-up, so I won't be talking to you for the rest of the day. You could say, "Well, since I won't be talking to you again today, have a good day" but that'd be weird.
posted by AppleTurnover at 2:38 PM on January 14, 2018

I never say "Have a good day" even when I work in a client-facing capacity. My rationale is that I LOATHE when I am having a bad day and someone blithely chirps "Have a good day!"

Seeing as I don't think ANYONE alive is having a day that can't get better, I always tell people "Have a better day/evening!" or "Have a better one!" Apparently, it works so well I have... infected... many of my coworkers.
posted by Samizdata at 9:43 PM on January 14, 2018

> thelonius:
"(2) Why does "Enjoy the rest of your day" seem so much more reasonable to me?

The only rationale I can come up with is that "Have a good rest of the day" reifies the remaining part of the day into an entity, due to the definite article, and, for whatever reason, this offends your sense of ontological parsimony.

But really I don't know if there's a reason. "Have a good one" enrages me to the point where it can kind of spoil a good mood; that is unfortunate, since it is popular. I'm perfectly willing to throw you to the wolves if "Have a good rest of the day" replaces it. Does either of us have a better case? I doubt it."

Yeah, thelonius, I hope things go better for you!

hides under desk
posted by Samizdata at 9:45 PM on January 14, 2018