[grep_name]

I've lived my whole life in the southeastern US, and the comments online about this always make me feel like an alien. Everyone here always seems to imply that it's meaningless because "You have to say 'good', and if you don't say that people get upset," but I've just never once had that experience.

I almost never say 'good' in response to that question, even to a coworker I don't know well. In my friend groups, usually people will be straightforward about how they're doing as well. Maybe people don't know how to say 'bad' without following up with a story? It's easy once you start doing it. "Not great, but it's fine" or "I'm just keeping along / taking it day by day" is a fairly common response to get from me, especially lately, and it's always honest. Sometimes I will just say "TBH this week completely sucks for me" before continuing with what the conversation was about originally. If things are going well I will be effusive in my (still short) response ("I'm doing awesome actually"). And I do care about how the other person is doing when they respond. I've even gone so far as to ask, after finding out about bad news later in the conversation, "Damn, why'd you say you were doing well?".

I find it to be a deeply useful way to start a conversation. If you ask how I'm doing and you don't know me well, and I say something to imply I'm not having a good day, it completely changes the way the conversation should be conducted. Same goes for the other person's response. You always start every conversation on the same page ('how impatient / stressed is the other person right now?' is one of the most important pieces of context you can have). Over time, I've even found that it has the benefit of making me reflect on a regular basis on how I feel in the moment vs how I'm actually doing on a longer-term scale.