(no subject)
What is it about our society that prevents us from being polite to one another?
I always take the time to say please and thank you, to ask how the other person I'm talking to is doing, or just to smile. I look strangers on the street in the eye and smile. I hold doors, pick up dropped items, and pay compliments. That seems to be extremely rare.
So many of the people I call each day, clients, landlords, employers, and applicants, are unfriendly if not outright rude. They don't say please or thank you, don't ask how I am, and hang up without saying, "Goodbye". I know that our society puts a huge emphasis on efficiency, but is it worth it at the cost of our kindness?
I work with a woman who is conservative and Christian. She knows that I am not, because my liberal pagan cubicle-mate and I have discussed politics and religion at length. She will no longer look at me or speak to me. She even refuses to direct tenant screening calls to me, despite the fact that I am pretty much the only one who makes them at this point. Today I was walking into the bathroom as she was walking out. I said, "Oh, hi!" and smiled. She ignored me (from a foot away) and walked out without glancing in my direction or changing her displeased expression. Are my differing beliefs really so offensive that she can't be polite? What does it say about her that she is so angry about it that she ignores her religion's calls to be loving and kind?
The same co-worker talks to her husband on the phone on a daily basis and has never said that the loves him. She's also never sounded happy to speak to him. Whenever he calls she sounds pissed off and surly, then hangs up (sometimes without even a goodbye). That's something that I've made a point to avoid for as long as Dallin and I have been together. It seems to me that when you stop trying, even to the small degree of saying that you love each other at the end of the conversation, you've lost something important. If you do love them, why not show it and say it? If you don't love them, why stay married? I'd also like to say that I've seen them together several times. They never touch, she doesn't look him in the face, they're always sarcastic and snippy, and they talk like the other person isn't there.
Then there's another co-worker who disagrees with me on religion, agrees with me politically, and has been nothing but kind since I started. She's single and I've never heard her for more than a minute on the phone, but she is always courteous and respectful to all of our colleagues. There's another co-worker who is conservative and Christian but who, again, is always respectful, polite, and funny. That's how it should be.
It really bothers me, this lack of consideration for one another. I'm making a sincere attempt to improve, myself. I'm making sure to ask how clients and applicants are (not so much landlords and employers, it makes them extremely awkward for some reason), thank them, and be genuine about it. I wrote down the license plate of a car that backed into another while parallel parking and drove off, then put it on the hit car's windshield. I make conversation with coworkers that I don't necessarily want to talk to, because it's rude to ignore them or be short. Hopefully it will encourage others to do the same. Probably not. I'll keep trying!
I always take the time to say please and thank you, to ask how the other person I'm talking to is doing, or just to smile. I look strangers on the street in the eye and smile. I hold doors, pick up dropped items, and pay compliments. That seems to be extremely rare.
So many of the people I call each day, clients, landlords, employers, and applicants, are unfriendly if not outright rude. They don't say please or thank you, don't ask how I am, and hang up without saying, "Goodbye". I know that our society puts a huge emphasis on efficiency, but is it worth it at the cost of our kindness?
I work with a woman who is conservative and Christian. She knows that I am not, because my liberal pagan cubicle-mate and I have discussed politics and religion at length. She will no longer look at me or speak to me. She even refuses to direct tenant screening calls to me, despite the fact that I am pretty much the only one who makes them at this point. Today I was walking into the bathroom as she was walking out. I said, "Oh, hi!" and smiled. She ignored me (from a foot away) and walked out without glancing in my direction or changing her displeased expression. Are my differing beliefs really so offensive that she can't be polite? What does it say about her that she is so angry about it that she ignores her religion's calls to be loving and kind?
The same co-worker talks to her husband on the phone on a daily basis and has never said that the loves him. She's also never sounded happy to speak to him. Whenever he calls she sounds pissed off and surly, then hangs up (sometimes without even a goodbye). That's something that I've made a point to avoid for as long as Dallin and I have been together. It seems to me that when you stop trying, even to the small degree of saying that you love each other at the end of the conversation, you've lost something important. If you do love them, why not show it and say it? If you don't love them, why stay married? I'd also like to say that I've seen them together several times. They never touch, she doesn't look him in the face, they're always sarcastic and snippy, and they talk like the other person isn't there.
Then there's another co-worker who disagrees with me on religion, agrees with me politically, and has been nothing but kind since I started. She's single and I've never heard her for more than a minute on the phone, but she is always courteous and respectful to all of our colleagues. There's another co-worker who is conservative and Christian but who, again, is always respectful, polite, and funny. That's how it should be.
It really bothers me, this lack of consideration for one another. I'm making a sincere attempt to improve, myself. I'm making sure to ask how clients and applicants are (not so much landlords and employers, it makes them extremely awkward for some reason), thank them, and be genuine about it. I wrote down the license plate of a car that backed into another while parallel parking and drove off, then put it on the hit car's windshield. I make conversation with coworkers that I don't necessarily want to talk to, because it's rude to ignore them or be short. Hopefully it will encourage others to do the same. Probably not. I'll keep trying!