How Rude!

(Source)
Have to confess to a slight confession with the Cheezburger sites,
but when I saw this I knew it was perfect for this post!

People nowadays no longer seem to care that manners are important and that it's courteous to other people existing around you in the world to not just consider yourself in everyday situations. I mean I know we all have bad days where we just completely hate everyone else in the world, but even then, when I'm striding down the street eminating fury out at all the people around me, if I bumped into someone (for example) I'd still instantly and instinctively apologise to them simply because it's rude not to. If someone is walking behind you through a doorway and you don't hold it but allow it to slam back in their face then you're a bit of a nob unless you were genuinely oblivious to their presence.

I think it's worse in the work place-I was lucky enough not to experience this at the theatre but if I get the bar job I applied for last week I almost certainly will do-when "the customer is always right" attitude becomes "the customer is going to be rude to you because you're merely there to serve them and they're always right". Another of my favourite internet procrastination sites is http://notalwaysright.com and it has a lot of stories of customers being uneccesarily rude to the people who were serving them, which seems to be a sad fact of life now- if you work in any job that involves dealing with the public then at some point someone is going to be discourteous to you just because they can. It's so uneccesary-what do you get out of being rude and insulting to someone when you could have smiled and been polite? The people who work behind the till are just as deserving as a kind word and a grin as anyone else, and if you do something stupid or rude then an apology is surely always warranted. 

It's not just at work though-more and more I seem to notice people being really rude in daily life, in various situations:

Example 1: I was at Derby train station, trying to find a seat in the waiting room to get out of the cold. All the seats were taken bar one, which a woman was using as a resting place for her carrier bag which had two books in. When I asked her to move the bag I got such a look of contempt from her, as if I'd just done her a huge injustice by asking if I could sit on the seat rather than continue to allow her to use it as a table. Admittedly this isn't too inconsiderate because she did move them for me, but the very fact she seemed to resent me for asking felt a little rude to me. They're BOOKS. They definitely don't need a seat to themselves.

Example 2: I was lucky enough the other day to be catching a bus at school kick out time, which was FUN.  Normally I'm content enough on buses with my headphones in and a good book, and this was the case here too, until some teenage (not by much, they were probably 12/13ish) lads got on and sat on the back seat behind me. One of them pulled out his mobile and a SPEAKER and proceeded to play his (IMO awful) music very loudly for the whole bus to hear. I took my headphones out and turned around to him and said (these are almost my exact words): "Look, I can hear that through my own music, can you turn it down please? Have a little respect for the other people around you."
What I got back was basically a mouthful of abuse so I stuck my headphones back in and tried to ignore him. Luckily he got off a couple of stops later after giving me the finger and then pressing every bell he passed on the bus just to piss the driver off. A really pleasant young lad, I can tell you. 

Example 3: This one actually happened to a friend of mine, who related it to me through angry text messages later that day. She was at work and there was a woman on the phone in front of her, although standing slightly out of the queue. She called the next person forwards and a man stepped up to her, at which point the woman on the phone started yelling angrily that she was next, not him. He responded with "well you were on the phone so I assumed you weren't waiting" before letting her take his place at the counter. Apparently she remained on the phone throughout and was incredibly rude during the time which my friend was serving her, before storming out and slamming the door so hard that apparently the whole building shook. 

And what purpose does it serve? All it does is make people who are just trying to do their jobs or go about their daily lives upset or angry because no-one gives a shit any more. It makes me sad that we live in a society where this is OK, or even normal. What's wrong with being nice to each other, what's wrong with treating people with a little politeness and courtesy every now and again? Just because you don't know someone personally doesn't mean you shouldn't treat them like a person. 

What do you think?

-Jenni-