I’ve always been using ~してもらえますか to make a request, like asking 前髪ちょっとだけ切ってもらえますか？ at hair salons or タクシー呼んでもらえますか？ at hotels, etc.
Personally, I enjoy using it since it sounds less forceful than ～してください, because to me, ～してください is too direct and not respecting the listener’s intentions. But that is just my impression and I wasn’t sure if ～してもらえますか also has a similar vibe to it.
I suppose ～してくださいますか or～していただけますか is always an option if I want to be safe, but to me it feels over the top and maybe it’s also out of place for more of the casual settings, like at hair salons or convenience stores.
So the gist of the question is: ～してもらえますか, yay or nay? The criteria I’m looking for are 1. not sounding too condescending, and 2. not sounding too formal. Thank you!
3 comments
It’s quite all right if you’re a customer or otherwise in a position where it’s natural for you to make a request, and your request is something they should naturally do for you.
If your request falls out of something they should be normally doing for everyone, you’d first apologize for making a request, explain why you would be absolutely grateful if they could accommodate you and then ask.
There’s a certain amount of directness that would be really rude in English but are perfectly fine in Japanese. For example, I was shocked to learn that it’s perfectly polite to use して欲しいです to request that your superior do something. In English you would *never* make that kind of request using “I want you to ~” Way too blunt. Japanese has a reputation for being more indirect than English, but there are some cases where it’s the reverse! Try to not to think about it with your English brain. Using してください is perfectly polite way to talk to a hairdresser etc
I think you don’t have to worry about sounding condescending unless it’s a context in which a high level of politeness is expected. If you’re asking a favour from a complete stranger, or a colleague, I would err towards いただけますか？ , but もらえますか？ isn’t at all out of place, especially if preceded by a すみません or some preamble.
To me it comes down to how tentatively you want to make the request. Of course you can make it even more tentative by asking いただけないでしょうか？ etc.
To friends I would use してもらってもいい？ or similar.