Mind Your Manners!

Good manners don't cost a thing. It's on a daily basis that I find myself struggling to understand how there are people in this world to whom manners are such an alien concept.

I do my best to maintain a positive, even cheery nature, with the people I interact with. Even on days when I'm feeling a little low, I still do what I can to smile at cashiers in shops and apologise to people I accidentally bump into on the street. It's not their fault I'm feeling grumpy, so why should I take it out on them by letting my behaviour slip and being moody with them? No, that's better saved for when my brothers wind me up at home! Besides, my mother brought me up to be polite, so why shouldn't I? 'Treat others how you would expect to be treated yourself' and all that. Not to mention that my 'please's and 'thank you's have always just come naturally to me.

So when someone looks at me and clicks their fingers, or practically barks an order at me, expecting me to bow and scrape to their every need, it is very hard to hold my composure. What's irritating is that most of the time I just have to grit my teeth and get on with it, because I can't afford to cause trouble for myself. But I am one of those people who will say a sarcastic 'You're welcome!' to someone's back if they haven't thanked me for letting them pass. (That's about as confrontational as I get, by the way. This is me we're talking about...)

A person not using their 'Ps and Qs', as an old teacher used to call them, is one thing. I can pretty much deal with that. It irritates me, but I can get past it.

Recently, however, I've come across a few different ways in which people have come close to taking rudeness to a new level.

Sometimes someone will just come and put an item down on the desk in front of me, without saying a word about what they want done with it. Then they seem put out when I give them a questioning look, because I should be able to read their minds and it's a cheek that I can't!

Then there's the people who don't talk to me or even look at me, which sometimes happens when I'm the one paying for something in a shop. The guys in the corner shop near me are the worst for this - I once had to stand and wait for the bloke to finish reading a newspaper article before he would ring up how much I owed him, and even then he was still distracted by the pictures!

One of my favourites is the 'Oi...!', which I hear a lot when I'm out and about as well as when it's being directed at me.

'Oi, how much is this?'; 'Oi, what's the Wi-Fi password?'; 'Oi..! *points*'.

The understandable assumption could be made that it's mainly people of the younger generation that I'm thinking of, but in my experience, it's actually the more senior of our citizens who are among the worst. I've had elderly people walk up to me, grunt out a syllable or two to indicate what they want, and then just walk off when they have it - not a please, thank you, kiss my arse, nothing! And the fact that some of them make it obvious that they're looking down their noses at me at the time just makes it harder to smile through.

My last couple of posts have been rather honest, and lately I've fancied writing some things that are a bit less personal, so this random rant seemed like a good starting point. It may seem petty and know I shouldn't let it bug me, and given the environment I work in, I've learnt to let a lot of it go over my head. But every now and again I just can't help but wonder why some people have so much trouble minding their manners.