I just want to ask if it is okay to say to your boss who is going home after
work お疲れ様でした気をつけてください or it is impolite?

Thank you
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-14T08:17:31.213
28655
2015-10-14T13:40:07.087
2015-10-14T13:39:27.990
11104
11437
question
grammar word-choice words
is it okay to regularly say 気をつけてください to someone departing out?
Yes and no.

The phrase 気を付けてください alone is in polite form (towards a person of a higher
standing slightly better would be: お気を付けてください). However it does feel a little
bit more like "please take care" rather than casual English greeting "take
care". It would be strange if you used the phrase every single time a person
leaves.

To strangers or people with whom you rarely meet, or towards a person you meet
every day, but in an unusual situation like a typhoon coming, a phrase
お気を付けてお帰りください would be very appropriate.

Then again, you might contract it to the previous お気を付けてください, or お気を付けて
depending on familiarity, context, characters left in an electronic message,
etc. I guess your teacher considered your situation of being late to be
unusual.

(お気を付けてください would be also appropriate for a variety of situations, like
towards someone going for a business trip, going abroad for holidays, or when
you want to be nice and show your gratitude for something (being invited to a
dinner), but you asked specifically for "going home after work" and that might
feel a bit strange repeated day by day)

(...yet again, if you make it a ritual to say so, you're good to go, then a
shorter お気をつけて might work best, I guess)
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-10-14T13:10:00.927
28658
2015-10-14T13:40:07.087
2015-10-14T13:40:07.087
11104
11104
28655
answer