Wed 13 Jun 2007
I have a client who always ends requests with “kindly do the needful.” Is that at all proper English? It drives me insane. I don’t know why seeing that drives me insane, but it does.
Also, small world alert: one of my clients at NewJob had a question for me and forwarded me an email from the administrator at a company with which his is partnered. It turns out said admin is one of my favorite client contacts from LastJob. The world is so tiny, so very tiny.
I had a coworker that used this exact same phrase. It drove me insane.
I would say it is not quite correct, since “needful” is an adjective and this phrase essentially doesn’t include the noun (or pronoun) it modifies. “Please do the needful [thing.]” would be better, I would say.
e.g., “Please do the needful sacrifices to Baal.”
I had someone at work explain this to me after I joined–like you, I kept hearing it around the office. It’s apparently a Britishism that became a commonly-used Indian phrase. As one of the developers in India told him, when you’re addressing someone in India (e.g., as a tech support person on the phone with a client), you don’t know what caste they are. If they’re a higher caste, you might insult them by telling them what to do, so you tell them to “please do the needful,” trusting that they’ll appropriately interpret what “the needful” is for them. Kind of useful, except that it also gives people carte blanche to interpret “the needful” as they see fit.
It’s an entertaining explanation at least, whether or not that’s the real origin.
Clearly, “the needful” is a new dance craze, and he is encouraging you to bust a move.
“Do the needful! What? What? Do the needful!”
The Britain->India->my ears explanation actually makes a lot of sense, and my experience would confirm this.
Regardless of the origins, it still made me want to find some pieces of flesh to use my Bedazzler on. I can also confirm that the end result was predictable as ever: the “needful” turned into doing nothing or screwing it up entirely and then I’d have to fix it for the person who didn’t quite know what the needful was.
Zee of the OMG, the client is even Indian. I’ll buy that explanation. Thank you!
I still want him to die, though. MAC, I am in queue to use your Flesh-B-Gone.
Also, in mrh’s world this client has never seen me try to dance. Gay: it doesn’t solve everything.