Caryl Hall - Speaknup
Common Courtesy is not so common anymore

Boy, this is one topic that gets me going. I know many of you can relate to the scenarios I'm about to gripe about!

Are parents just not teaching their kids manners any more? I kinda think that's a rhetorical question, because so many young parents I encounter don't practice manners themselves. No, it is not a teacher's job to teach your child how to behave in public.

Let's just cover the basic "rules of society" for a starter.

1. When entering a building, elevator, train, etc., you wait for people to come out before you enter. Holding the door open for them would be nice.
2. If you drop something on the floor, pick it up. That includes clothing in a department store. (More on this later.)
3. Just as we drive on the right side of the street in this country, when you go up or down a stairway, you stay on the right. On sidewalks, you walk on the right.
4. If you damage someone else's property, offer to replace it (or repair it or clean it). This goes hand-in-hand with treating someone else's property better than you treat your own property.

Okay, you're getting the picture. So what about people allowing their kids to yell in a movie theater or restaurant? Do these people really believe the rest of us think it's amusing? Do they care?

It seems the parents don't make an effort to quiet the kid until someone finally embarrasses them by shouting out to control the kid or take it outside. Years ago, the manager would ask people to leave for disturbing the other patrons. Someone reported recently that when he asked the woman behind him in the theater to hold it down (she was on the phone), her incredulous response was that it was a business call. In the movie theater?! And that made it okay to disturb everyone around her?

Speaking of shopping! A woman with two kids was looking around in the toy department of a store. The little boy took a bicycle off the shelf, rode it around briefly, brought it back, dropped it on the floor, then walked away.

Since the woman seemed oblivious, I politely informed her that her son dropped the bike on the floor. She glared at me as if I had assaulted her and put the bike back on the shelf. How dare me!

Standing in a long line for checkout is not bad enough. Don't you love it when the cashier is too busy talking on the phone to notice that she may need to speed things up a bit, or that I may have a question but can't get a word in? Evidently she missed the Customer Service training.

One experience amazed me, although I guess it shouldn't have. A woman was standing to the side of a checkout line in the supermarket. She held no items and wasn't in the line, so I wheeled my cart in front of her.

She jumped in front of me and said her husband was coming with their cart. I didn't see him, so I spoke up. "He's not here now and I am. You can't reserve a spot in a checkout line."

She moved, obviously not happy about it. I was already being processed when her husband showed up. Clearly she thought it was my fault that she now had to wait in line.

So what's wrong with people? Noticing a big difference when I travel to the east coast from the west coast, I started wondering if our influx of immigrants are not learning about this "contract with society" that so many of us grew up with. But our grandparents were immigrants too, and they taught us. Is it the culture of the "flower children" that have burned the "contract" along with their bras?

Why have people stopped caring about the other guy? Would you turn into a pumpkin if the guy with the turn signal got in front of you in your lane?

Maybe it's a result of business organizations that no longer consider their employees very valuable. When you don't feel secure with your livelihood, focus turns to self - the "me" generation. To heck with you, what's in it for me?

I don't have any answers. But I am frustrated, ticked off and concerned. Are you?

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