Thought Provoking Thursday: Response 1 

“Are people losing their manners or are they becoming more precautious of one another?” 

              When I was growing up, my Father used to always tell me, “You can’t have two sets of manners.” And what he meant by that was, you should always be on your best behavior no matter who you’re interacting with. As much as I love my old man, and as much as I appreciate the sentimental message that he passed onto me, I must disagree. I must disagree wholeheartedly and for one reason, the very existence of my “customer service voice” disproves this theory. Through years of working through the gauntlet of customer service jobs, I have developed a way of speaking to customers that is so far detached from how I would normally communicate with people in my day to day life, that it’s not just an additional set of manners, It’s a whole other personality. And anyone that has ran through that tumultuous gambit of customer service, food service, and/or the dreaded call centers, know exactly what the hell I’m talking about. This new persona, this alter ego, it’s a gradual transformation that is developed over years of dealing with countless Sunday church crowds and Black Friday shoppers, who are quite honestly worse than rabid dogs. At least dogs don’t know how to ask for your fucking manager or leave scathing reviews on yelp. But eventually, you get used to getting screamed at over someone’s under-cooked food or a billing issue that was not your fault. So, instead of coming unglued and murdering someone in front of their family inside of an Outback Steakhouse, you learn to say insincere yet empathetic bullshit like “Oh my God! I’m so sorry that the plate of food that you ate, in its entirety, was so disgusting, I’d love to give you all your money back.” “What can I do to make sure you come back again and enjoy our fine Australian cuisine again? You’re a valued customer.” And then you walk back into the kitchen or the break room, you spit the fowl taste of corporate conflict resolution out of your mouth, and the real you comes out with a fury. You proceed to curse the entire lineage of an absolute stranger, you wish ungodly things to happen to them, and say borderline unspeakable shit about them. But, like the insincere fool you are, you smoke a cigarette, put on the same happy face, and do it all over again. That duality, that split between being sincere or being disingenuous, and how easily it can be done is, all be it, a little frightening. But I think that kind of ass kissing behavior correlates more with the idea of being on the side of precautious than an overall loss of manners. Because once you’ve had someone threaten to burn your house down over an increase in their internet prices, you know that some people are limitless in their irrationalities and are just not worth entertaining. But this precautious style of dealing with people can easily morph into a sense of “standoffishness”, that eventually finds its way into your day to day behaviors. And overtime this level of cynicism can overtake your worldview because you have to reserve your common courtesies for specific scenarios. Basically, we have faked ourselves out of manners.

              When I posted this “Thought Provoking Thursday” question on Instagram I received a barrage of responses in my DM’s. Everything from, “You should take your clothes off”, “No and yes”, “Feet pics?”, and let’s not forget all the penis related answers I received, but that’s what happens you ask the internet anything. Nonetheless, there was one diamond in the rough. A great friend of mine responded with “It’s not a matter of people being less polite or avoiding interaction, I think that it’s related to a misconception of entitlement.” He explained that some people feel as though they are entitled to some form acknowledgement, and he disagrees. For example, why do we have to feel obligated to “give the ol’ head nod” or “fake smile” whenever we pass someone that we barely know or don’t know at all. My friend views those social norms as disingenuous, and as a result he does not adhere to them, and that I can vouch for that one hundred and ten fucking percent. My friend is a no-nonsense Puerto Rican that can undeniably come across as a complete and total asshole to those that don’t know him. (Don’t get worked up, he’s my friend and he most likely read that description and was very flattered). But to those of us that do have the pleasure of calling him a friend, know that he is one of the most honest and caring human beings’ around, but he will not hesitate to tell you that you are fucking up in a major way. And his lack of patience and non-existent filter is, quite frankly, super refreshing because it’s not everyday you see someone being that true to themselves. 

              In conclusion, I don’t think that we have necessarily lost our manners, as much as we have misplaced them somewhere between shallow insincerity and a lack of basic human decency. If you can take anything away from this, be a little more like my ferocious Puerto Rican friend and be true to thine own self be true.