What Ever Happened to Manners?

Of all the many life lessons I learned in my youth, drummed into my bones by my parents, common courtesy is one of the most important. I was always taught to be kind and respectful to the people around me, to be patient and understanding, to say please and thank you, to hold the door for strangers and all manner of other simple things that fall under the general definition of good manners. As a child I always assumed that these things were fairly universal life lessons but as I have gotten older it has become ever increasingly apparent that common courtesy and manners are no longer particularly common at all. That is not to say that I don't still see strangers holding doors and being polite, that still happens, the problem I see is that those instances are outweighed by the people I see being rude, self-centered, picky and nasty. The worst behavior I see almost invariably has to do with people being rude to food-service or cashier level workers.

It seems that under the shield of "the customer is always right" some people in our modern culture have become obsessed with being pushy, demanding and extraordinarily rude as a weapon to bully their way through life. In order to demand special treatment, discounts, or extra whatever some people seem perfectly happy discarding anything resembling decent behavior.

I am not sure where the blame for this behavior can be laid, is it the result of poor parenting, social norms, consumerism, or perhaps all of the above.

At some point it seems like we have forgotten the golden rule, perhaps the most important rule for a civil society: to treat others as you wish to be treated. To me this always seemed like such an obvious and self evident rule and while I have not always successfully adhered to the golden rule I still try to uphold that basic principle as often as I can.

I think some people think being polite means being a pushover or not getting your way and that could not be further from the truth. I cannot count the number of times a little patience and courtesy has gotten me free upgrades, extra effort from employees to find or do what I need or ensures that I get something first. When waiting to get a ticket for an overbooked plane back from the UK I was willing to wait patiently and politely while half a dozen other customers were all shouting and demanding and while they wound up shuffled off to another side of the terminal to continue complaining a helpful check-in employee went the extra mile calling the around first to find the arrival terminal and then check with the arrival terminal to double-check seat availability and find me a spot. Within twenty minutes I was checked in and sitting at a cafe eating cake and drinking something caffeinated while the gaggle of angry customers continued to angrily get nowhere. Walking into a busy subway shop struggling with a series of complicated and demanding orders nit-picking the exact amount of onion and dressing going onto their sandwich the manager recognized me as a regular, put together my usual order in moments and I was checked out and gone with a friendly wave long before the rude and grumpy customers were finished.

My favorite examples always go back to a friendly older lady who owned a Chinese restaurant nearby who was always happy to see my family and I and always threw something extra into our order for free and all of these things only happened because either my family in general or myself specifically were always polite, reasonable and courteous with these individuals regardless of whether they were minimum wage employees serving us food or airport clerks or whatever.

There are a great many things about life that you cannot control, the weather, traffic, Monday mornings, but there is something you can control, your own attitude and behavior. In my experience it has never cost me anything to be polite, reasonable or kind when dealing with others and has very often served very much to my advantage. By treating others the way you wish to be treated it reasons that others will treat you the same. Maybe not everyone, maybe not most people, but some will and that is a start.