[RickOShay]

Ok, so I only had a chance to talk to two people today. They work in the same office as me but in a different department. Not sure but they are probably in their late 40's or early 50's. My friends are in their late 20's early 30's.

They both reconfirmed what the other 3 have basically said. They said おやすみなさい is never used to have an imperative meaning.

They felt お〜なさい construction is not so common, even when mentioning some of the phrases like お待ちなさい etc. that you asked me to ask about. And while お〜なさい construction is grammatically correct with most verbs, the actual usage of such constructions is not common. They also felt that the お〜なさい construction sounds old, and of older generations.

When asked to rate the relevance of the construction in today's language on a scale of 1-10. 10 being very relevant, and 1 being not relevant, both rated it a 2 or a 3.

One of the ladies continued on with an explanation that I think makes a lot of sense. She said she feels the お〜なさい construction is, and has been fading out of the Japanese language due to the fact that people are continuing to become more and more indirect and vague in their speaking habits. And very direct phrases like お〜なさい, which stem from the era of when Japan had a much more defined level of social classes, are becoming obsolete because they do not fit well into how modern society wants to communicate.

So well there you have it I guess. Is that good enough?