Courtesy

[Pyrothrillah]

How is it that American's have seem to of lost their sense of Courtesy?

I stopped by Subway after dropping a motherboard at the post office for RMA, and I couldn't help but notice that people just have no sense of courtesy at all. This Subway is connected to a conveinience store and I went there first to get a couple packs of smokes and some milk and I had to wait for both cashiers to finish talking with each other on a matter that has nothing to pertain to their work environment once-so-ever.

So finally I do this, they are not nice at all. I head over to Subway to order a sub and have to wait on the same exact scenario. They are all sitting around and have nothing better to do and don't have any of the food items ready, no bread in the oven, or any of the tables cleaned off.(I notice everything)

So finally after I get my order, which is way off from what I had originally planned on getting, I begin walking out of the door and a younger girl comes in about the time I walk out yaking on her cell phone and doesn't walk to the side or anything just barges through, not holding the door or anything.

Maybe I was raised different than most people, but I always hold doors for people. (No, not talking about just the poor little old lady with a walker) I try my best to use "Sir" and "Ma'am" and be polite as possible. I'm not perfect and sometimes I don't just like anyone else. I was taught this way and if my parents ever saw me being so rude they'd probably find something painful and beat my *** with it even though I'm grown and don't live with them anymore.

If someone needs help, I'll help them. Even if it puts me behind in doing whatever it is I am doing, I will try. Most people have no desire or intention of helping anyone out cause it will take too much energy and time out of their precious lives. Instead they would rather hound people for their mistakes and imperfections, while not looking in the mirror and they mess that they have become.

I have friends that have been raised to think self before others. I always do the opposite. Maybe I am in the wrong?

 

[HAVOC]

Believe me, I deal with rude, self centered, obnoxious, arrogant and non-courteous people everyday. I don't know that it's just an "American" thing though. I could give you a list of at least 10 different nationalities that I deal with on a daily basis and each is just as rude as the next one.

Example: I'm speaking to a woman on the phone at work answering various questions and giving her information about some of the services that we offer. The woman doesn't speak very good English and it required me to really listen very closely. As I'm on the phone another woman comes to the desk, sees me on the phone, hears me talking on the phone and stands there for a few seconds...

I look up and say, "I'm sorry, I'll be right with you..." She doesn't say anything...

I'm now writing down information about the woman I'm speaking with on the phone. I'm having a hard time understanding this woman because her English is very poor. Half the time I had to "TRY" to translate my English to Spanish. Which wasn't very good.

So the woman standing there says, "YEA UM... CAN YOU JUST TELL ME IF YOU GUYS ARE OPEN NEXT WEEK FOR PROGRAMS??? BECAUSE NEXT WEEK IS SCHOOL VACATION!" ~ I looked up at her and took an acrylic flier holder that was sitting right in front of her and straightened it square in front of her view. The flier said, "WE WILL BE OPEN FOR PROGRAMS NEXT WEEK!"

She just walks away... BTW, it's not like she was in a rush. She spent about an hour and 1/2 in our lobby. I guess she just felt that her question was so much more important than what I was doing with another Client. Not to mention the information she wanted was staring her right in the face.

 

[Pyrothrillah]

I know exactly what you mean.

I used to manange a conveinience store and a liquor store when I was in HS (Best job you can have being in high school ) and I used to have to rudest people ever come in. One day I am extremely busy, the cashier was new and she had no experience with anything so I left my desk and run the busy hour for her while she stocked and such. This was during the time that people driving off with gas was a big deal on the news and all the stores had switched over to the prepay program. Anyways, I am super busy with a line of customers and I was extremely fast at doing this, it was just Friday and all of the ship yard worker have one thing on their mind after they get paid, beer.

So anywho, I am busy with them, got people asking me prices (which are all labeled on either the items or on the shelves) and this guy is outside trying to get gas. Once you lift the nozzle from the pump a dinger goes off which is extremely annoying, and it won't shutup until either you preset their gas or they hang it up. So it's going off for all of five min I am sure and then while I am busy with everyone in the store, he comes in a starts yelling at me because I saw him and wouldn't bother to turn the gas on when he showed up..blah blah. And begins talking about how I'm in the wrong and that I should of turned the pump on for him cause I know that he won't run off with gas.

Yeah, I am pretty sure he wouldn't of. But, he can thank the rest of this rude society that he can't cause if enough people do it, it will mess up something good for everyone. No one likes to have to go in a store, leave a credit card and fill up, then come back in to get their card and charge it. Or to put too much money down and find out that it was too much and have to come back in for change.

So, me being cocky after he finished saying "I'll just go to the store down the road!", I told him why is he bothering to yell at me when he could of DONE been there by now. I didn't care, our gas was high due to location and the company we used to deliver the fuel and honestly we weren't making squat off of gas because we could only raise it by a few cents or else people would just go to town and buy it for much cheaper at a Murphy Station at Wal-Mart.

I've also been threatened by customers about nit picky stuff, mainly because they were drunk, but no excuse nonetheless. Not that it scared me too bad because I knew where my peacemaker was, plus I was 17, indestructible.

People like that are the ones that pull the doors that has "Push" written on them.

 

[Trotter]

I was raised the same way as you, Pyro. It seems the younger people are the ruder they are anymore. All you can do is shake your head and go on, unfortunately.

I guess, Havoc, she figured you were already answering questions so she would toss hers in too.

 

[Jorsoft]

I was raised the same way as you, Pyro. It seems the younger people are the ruder they are anymore. All you can do is shake your head and go on, unfortunately.

I guess, Havoc, she figured you were already answering questions so she would toss hers in too.

There are plenty of ruder older people too, Trot .

I was raised same as you guys, I'm pretty courteous in person and I always hold doors and I say please and thank you to just about everything. I've dealt with a lot of jerks when I was working retail and they come from all age groups and nationalities pretty much equally in my experience. Some 50-ish year old fellow actually threatened with with death (death) if his mail in rebate (which was through Compaq, not me) didn't come back. I've had all manner of merchandise thrown at me, on the ground in front of me, I've been whistled at like a dog (not the way to get a happy response from me!), the list goes on and on. I've got no explanation for it, apparently there are a lot of people out there who just think they're better than everyone else and don't need to give respect, just demand it.

 

[Pyrothrillah]

I was raised the same way as you, Pyro. It seems the younger people are the ruder they are anymore. All you can do is shake your head and go on, unfortunately.

It makes my brain hurt to watch these kids now yell at their parents until they get what they want. If I ever yelled at mine to get what I wanted, I'd of got what I deserved, in which isn't what I would originally want

 

[Spit-wad]

Look at it from the other point of view.

I can honestly say that I've used the words "sir" or "ma'am" less than five times in my life. It's not how I was raised, and it's not my style.

I rarely hold doors open for people, unless they obviously can't do it themselves.


I easily get ****ed or annoyed at people, and find myself muttering obscenities a lot, but I'm sure people have done the same about me. Honestly, whatever. If you feel like being super nice, go for it, but don't get mad at people who are trying to find a way to get through their crappy jobs or might have just broken up with their boyfriend and are talking about it on their phone.

 

[Pyrothrillah]

Look at it from the other point of view.

My point exactly.

Admire your honesty.

 

[Harper]

Get my fair share of this too. Since i work as a Telstra Mobile Phone Dealer, Telstra always tells the clients to bring their broken phones back to the shop you purchased it from for RMA. The amount of abuse I get. Especially when I don't have a loan phone. Or a loan phone to suit the phone that is currently getting repaired.

One thing that annoyies me the growing amount of people that seem to work in one place or another just to collect a pay cheque. My local hardware shop. The returns, keycutting, equipment hire is all done from the on desk. Normally returns and equipment hire takes a little longer to complete. And normally you have a line up of about 5 people. On any other day, I would not mind. But what really annoyies me is that you have one person working on the desk, meanwhile you can see 2 other staff memebers just lacking off in the background.
There was ths one time where the lady at the return desk shouted out to the other staff member that she could do with some help at the desk as there a line up. However the reply she was given was "But I am giving some one training". You then looked at the body language of these other 2 staff member, and you could tell that they were just having a socal chit chat.

 

[saltynay]

It goes full circle though. I went to a traditional English boarding school so my manners are normally very proper and old school chivalryous, sometimes I wonder why I bother. Girls seem to be the most rude at college simply because they know that unlike a guy they are 95% sure they won't get hit whatever they do. So they go around bullying people then expect chivalrous behaviour in return. Feminism and equal rights are in there height of popularity and it just seems to me like girls have more rights then guys in some areas of society.

College also is an adult college so we have quite a lot of 60 odds doing various courses and most of them are extremely rude.As student president I spend a lunch a week going around finding out all the complaints and having a general chat with everyone. The old fogeys get the most complaints against them; Being loud in the library, Pushing to the front in the cafe when there is an obvious queue, not holdng doors, walking in large groups and not parting and forcing others to walk in the gutter, etc.

Don't even get me started on the chavs that stand around shouting obscenities at anyone who doesn't notice them, fortunately that is only a very small amount of college students.