I'm gonna let you go

A friend was over a few nights ago after dinner and we got into a strangely involved conversation about the practice of ending a telephone conversation by saying some variant of "I'm gonna let you go."

I was sharing my observation, having relocated to New England from the Midwest a little over two years ago now, that folks here on the East Coast seem a touch more ... abrupt. Fewer little social niceties. A childhood friend from Madison who went to college in New York asked me, shortly after moving, "don't you love the East Coast? Less fakey niceness." Maybe I was just more steeped in it, having lived in flyover country for a much bigger chunk of my life, but I sorta miss the fakey niceness. I long for the cashier at Walgreens to say something to me, even if it's just the amount she expects me to pay.

I was illustrating this absence of social pleasantries with the practice of ending a telephone conversation. Instead of saying directly "I have to go," you're easing your way out of the conversation, deferentially acknowledging that the time of the person on the other end is far more precious than your own (OK, OK, even as I write this, I become ever more aware of how obsequious it actually is). Carol had a completely different interpretation: 'let go' is used in the same sense as 'dispose of,' eg, "Pete, since the Dr. Scholl's account was lost on your watch, we're going to have to let you go." The subtext of ending the call with "I'm gonna let you go," then, being "I can't stand another minute of this tedium! Away with you!"

Anyway, let me let you go now. But what do you think? Yea, nay, or indifferent on I'm gonna let you go?