We, as a society, are too damn polite.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s time to come together as a people, as a country, as a society, and fight an evil that threatens the very foundation of everything we hold dear. And that evil, my friends, is politeness.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. “But Sauron,” you say, in your oh-so-placating voice, “politeness is one of the hallmarks of an advanced society. It’s one of the things that separates us from the animals …”

You probably said a lot more, too, but frankly I stopped listening to you before you even opened your cake-hole. You wouldn’t have tried explaining things if you’d experienced the stupid politeness I’ve had to endure the past couple of days.

Stupid Polite Gesture #1: I’m on my way to work this morning. Sitting in traffic, listening to talk radio, waiting my turn to get on the interstate. In other words, minding my own business.

There’s an intersection controlled by a traffic light just before the on-ramp to the interstate. Traffic always backs up here, because a LOT of people get on the interstate at this on-ramp. I’m second in line at the traffic light … a white Honda Accord is ahead of me.

Anyway, the traffic light turns green. There’s space for about three cars just past the traffic light, before the backlog of wanna-be-on-the-interstate cars starts. The white Honda Accord in front of me pulls into the intersection, so I follow along like a good little traffic sheep. And then the Accord STOPS. I slam on my brakes, too, and try to figure out what the hell the driver is doing.

What she’s doing is, she’s being POLITE. She’s letting somebody on our right (who has a RED LIGHT) turn in front of her. “Go ahead, take my place in this line,” she’s gesturing to the turning car. “I don’t mind. Lalala!”

Yeah, that’s all well and good for YOU, missy, but I’m sitting here in the middle of the intersection with the heinie of my vehicle sticking out. You don’t mind that car taking YOUR spot, but that means YOU are now occupying what should be MY spot. Naturally, traffic isn’t getting on the interstate at ALL right now, so I’m stuck. I look like one of those jerks who try to beat the red light at the intersection and wind up blocking cross-traffic, when in reality I was just sabotaged by an idiot being polite. She’s all safe and secure sitting there beyond the traffic light, while I’m a massive glob of cholesterol clogging up the traffic artery. And it’s NOT MY FAULT.

Stupid Polite Gesture #2: I stopped at a fast-food place a couple of days ago for lunch. It was crowded, because … well, I don’t really need to explain it, do I? It’s lunchtime at a fast-food place in America. It’s not like we don’t go through this every single weekday. That’s why restaurant employees refer to the “lunch rush.” They understand the need to get people in, take their order, and move them out.

The good thing is, the line is moving pretty quickly. Soon there’s only one person ahead of me. He places his order, the counter girl rings it up, all is working smoothly.

And then the guy notices the girl is wearing an LSU pin on her shirt. (LSU was going to play Alabama in football the next day.) So he says something to her about the pin, and she laughs, and they start talking. It’s not really flirty-talk; just basic chit-chat about football.

The guy’s food comes. He’s already paid. And he’s still standing there talking. Standing there. In what should now be MY spot.

Now, I can’t really fault the guy. He’s talking to a cute girl (and, frankly, judging by his looks and apparent personality he doesn’t get to do that too often), so all is good in his world. But the girl isn’t wrapping up the conversation. She’s still just chatting away about the kicking game, and defense, and the ghost of Knute Rockne, and God knows what else. She’s being polite.

But I want to order and eat. I can’t do that, because politeness is blocking my way. I’m wishing the girl will tell him to get lost, or pull him onto the counter and ravish him amidst the French fries. Either way I’d get some resolution to this problem. As it is, I’m stuck in a politeness-induced limbo. If I switch lines, I’ll have to start the waiting process all over again. If I stay where I am, there’s a very real danger the counter girl will begin using pickles and sesame seeds to diagram a play for this guy on top of her register, and I’ll waste my lunch hour having to listen to them talk about how the wishbone was the greatest offense EVER without being able to order, pay for, and eat some crappy fast food.

I finally solved the problem by stabbing the guy in the kidney with a Maori spear I just happened to have with me. When he collapsed, I quickly stepped up to place my order, before the counter girl did something ELSE that was stupid and polite, like try to help him stop the bleeding.

Stupid Polite Gesture #3: This didn’t actually happen to me, but I saw it as it unfolded. Two guys at my office were approaching a door, one a few steps ahead of the other. The guy in front had his hands full with some boxes, but when he got to the door, he somehow managed to pull it open. Then he realized somebody else was behind him. So, instead of going on through the door, he tried to shift the boxes in his hands and use his hip somehow to hold the door open for the other guy. As a result, he lost his grip on one of the boxes, tried to compensate, and wound up dropping all of them. He also lost his hip-grip on the door in the process, and it hit the other guy as he was walking through it.

That wasn’t the stupid polite gesture, though. I’m guilty of that, because I stopped and helped the first guy pick up his boxes, when I should have just laughed at him. Or at least stabbed him with a Maori spear.

So please … if you’re thinking about being polite to someone else, consider the tremendous damage you could be doing to our society, and reconsider. And if that doesn’t make a difference to you, then think about what’s TRULY important:

It might be bothering ME.

2

Be careful. You keep talking like this and they’ll kick you out of the South.

3

I wish my Swiss Army Knife had a Maori spear attachment. They sound just so danged multi-purpose useful.

4

The "thank you"s that retail managers force their employees to say after every transaction make my blood curdle. Nothing grates on my nerves more than a meaningless “thank you”. Holy crap, I need a nap now.

5

I think I’m gonna remake the South in my own image. It’s due for an overhaul anyway.

Mosier: You are absolutely correct, and I wish I’d thought of that sooner. I called some store a few weeks ago, and the poor person answering the phones had to say “It’s a great day at WhateverStoreIWasCallingBecauseNowIDon’tRemember, thank you for calling, this is Thing 1, how can I help you?” I felt so bad for the person, because they were almost out of breath when they finished.

6

WRT #1, the nearest major intersection to my house is like this - EW traffic has 2.5 minutes, then NS gets 30 sec. Yet someone on the NS street always feels they need to stop to let someone exiting a parking lot into traffic ahead of them. Apparently they don’t realize that being polite to this one car means they are being impolite to several cars behind them.

A variant occurs in some situations where cars stop for pedestrians/bikes waiting to cross the street. If I have stopped my bike and am awaiting a break in traffic, I neither expect nor really appreciate when an oncoming car surprises me by stopping. And if I’m driving behind Mr. Politenessman and he has no signal directing him to stop, I’m none to pleased either.

(Disclaimer - this midwesterner has to express his appreciation for the terribly civilized system he recently encountered in Massachusetts, where apparently drivers are under the misapprehension that pedestrians actually have the right of way - at least in marked crosswalks. What a novel idea!)

7

I try to be as polite a person as possible, but there’s one thing I do that pushes me close to self-loathing.

I pull up to a toll booth, I hand the toll booth worker the “leaving New Jersey” fee, and then I say “thank you” to him.

A person stands there, offering me no service whatsoever, and I thank him for taking money from me.

It’s gotten to the point that I drive up to the toll booth, mentally chanting “don’t say ‘thank you’ don’t say ‘thank you’ don’t say ‘thank you’ Thank you Ah, fuck!”

8

I do not think those things are actual politeness.

In Situation #1, you have a case of someone disobeying traffic rules, and breaking the law is not polite. This is someone who is being misguidedly “friendly” but who is in fact being very impolite by screwing up traffic all around her.

Likewise, the guy in the restaurant is not being polite at all, nor is the girl. He is inconsiderately hitting on a girl in the middle of her work hours. The proper thing is for her to get rid of the guy, and if she doesn’t, you can say “Excuse me, I think it’s my turn to order.” Or spear him, whichever. There’s nothing impolite about asserting yourself in the face of deliberate inconsideration.

Guy #3 was just trying to do too many things at once, which is dopey, but he probably wasn’t thinking.

So…what we need is intelligent politeness! Manners applied by thinking people! IOW, we need people to start using their brains, and…um. Yeah, if only. :smiley:

9

What a truly wonderful post, and so insightfull as well. Thank you Sauron, thank you very much for sharing this with us. We all really, really appreciate it.

10

I’ve got my eye on you.

11

Quit being so damned polite. It took my time to read this post that I could have been doing something else with! :stuck_out_tongue:

12

In my best Judge Haller: I must remind you, suh, that Bummin’ham is NOT a Southern city. It is indeed surrounded by Alabama, but it is no more southron than those boys from Maine at Andersonville were southron just cause they technically resided in Georgia.

God I hate this, and I’ve had to do it at a couple of jobs. I loved the scene from the movie Idiocracy where in the dumbed down future customers at Costco are greeted with “Welcome to Costco I love you… welcome to Costco I love you… welcome to Costco I love you…”

The most irritating politeness I’ve seen way too much of is people being patient and understanding with A-holes who talk on their cell phones while in line. I’m at my bank waiting for the next available teller, the guy ahead of me goes to the window and rather than do his transaction has to continue his conversation “Yeah it should be a damn purty class ring honey it cost eight hundred dollars… hell no I’m not paying for that… well what’d your Mama say… paternity test says I ain’t no such thing! No your brother can’t staple a mouse pad to the dog ada a aoudfoiuaio aoidjfaoijdf aodjf a adfafffa…”. The teller, even though there’s a line, never once asks him to “Please sir, FIGURE OUT IF YOU WANNA TALK ON THE (@$#$ING PHONE OR BANK AND THEN STOP DOING THE OTHER ONE!” but smiles and nods with an “I understand…Kids say the darndest things…especially to their caseworkers…” and only slightly patronizing eye angle. Always irks me.

I think there’s a law that if a senior citizen wishes to go on and on and on and on to a store clerk then it’s punishable by jail time to interrupt them regardless of whether you’re a clerk or a customer in line. It’s the only time that I’m grateful for surly stupid seeming teen-clerks because if it’s a sweeter and older clerk (like I would be) they feel honor bound to sit and listen to “Fifteen dollars and thirty nine cents for a pair of bedroom slippers Lord a’mighty… when I was a girl we made our own bedroom slippers whenever a cat or a dog would die we had this one cat named Nancy who it turnt out was going from house to house jumpin’ in windas and smotherin’ babies in their crib ooh Lord he was pretty with a big fluffy black tail and Siamese eyes we got him from Chester Leon Rufus, Jr., did you know him? Naw I wouldn’t think so he died about 1959 well his grandson Warner was on TV on that To Catch You A Predator gameshow and I only saw part of it but it looked like he won I don’t really understand how it’s played but you know which one I did used to love watching was that I’ve Got a Secret with Bill Cullen ooh Lord I’d have dashed my babies brains out on a rock just for five minutes of riding that man like he was the last horse out of poor doomed Ilium oh I love Homer but I can’t stand the way the colored boys today call him Homie and they all want to fight dogs when in my day we used to fight Mexicans sometimes Papa’d come home say we have some Mexicans here and that orangutan hadn’t fought anyone lately take him out the basement and we’d put them in with the Mexicans course it wasn’t fair unless we got the orangutan drunk first cause they strong you don’t see many orangutans today but used to if you went five miles out in the country you used to pray you wouldn’t have to stop to rewind your car engine cause if you did the orangutans would get you they traveled in packs in them days and one of 'em stole my Jergens lotion from right outta my womb and that’s why to this day I cain’t remember phone numbers adjf aad jfioau diofiau dfaud fadfu” while the teen clerk can make it clear with a sneer and if necessary an “I got other customers” for the old person to move on.

I do hope this custom stays around til I’m old though.

13

I think politeness is very important. We all have to get along in a crowded society and politeness helps smooth things over.

In the examples you give:

  1. The driver in front of you is an idiot.
    If you are on a main road within a queue of traffic, it is sensible to let one car pull out from a side road (where there are no lights). The next driver does so as well, and steadily everybody gets where they want to be.
    If you are crossing a complex junction, concentrate on what you should be doing. Let the lights do their job.

  2. The assistant needs training.
    It’s good to be polite to a customer, but you are being paid to serve, not chat. Just say “Hang on a moment” to the football guy and serve the queue. If he’s worth talking to, he’ll understand and wait politely.

  3. The third guy does have good instincts, but has no common sense.
    If carrying parcels, you must politely say “Sorry I can’t hold the door for you” and go straight through it.

14

The problem with modern society isn’t an excess of politeness but a shortage of bodily harm. I’m serious: it seems like once upon a time resorting to a punch in the face was a socially acceptable way of dealing with assholes. Nowadays it’s polite pacifism up to the moment you crack and go postal.

15

One of my friends is so used to thanking the toll takers, that she even thanks the ticket machines. And yes, I do always make fun of her for it.
Now, I have never thanked a machine. But, the Mass Pike, from exit 6 to exit 1 (Springfield to Lee) is free. You still have to take a ticket but you don’t pay anything. I always thank the person giving me the ticket because they gave me something and I can’t help it. But, why do I always thank the person who takes the ticket from me? If anything, they should be thanking me. But, even that is unnecessary since I never give them money.

16

What really bugs me in Sauron’s first example is being the person on the right getting waved on by the too polite person. Fuck! If I do go I’m inconveniencing all the motorists behind the waver, but to not go might somehow upset the waver.

Similarly it happens frequently on the four lane road on which I work that when I’m stopped and signalling left in the left-hand south bound lane that someone will stop in the left-hand north bound lane and cheerfully wave me across. Polite? Sometimes I can see that there are several vehicles in the right-hand north bound lane with no such inclination to let me cross. Other times I cannot see if anything’s coming in that lane. Either way it doesn’t seem smart to proceed. But not going is a slap in the face of the person who was just trying to do something nice. Stupid, but nice. It gives me heartburn.

17

I do this ALL THE TIME. I think it’s become a reflex. The other day someone asked me for directions, and when they said “Okay, thanks,” I found myself saying “Thanks!” back to them. :smack:

18

That’s quite possibly the most beatiful thing I have ever read. I applaud you sir.

19

I hate “Stop Sign Hand Wavers”. They seem to be reproducing at an alarming rate. I pull up to a stop sign, some ass has been sitting there since I was back a half a block and he waves me through. I always keep an eye on him in case he decides at the last moment to change his mind and T-bone me like the homicidal sociopath that he really is.

20

#1 happens around here all the time. Pedestrians will jump out, take four steps, forcing me to stop and then they stop and start waving me, but I can’t because they’re already crossing the street and have the right of way. Same thing with cars. “Oh, you go.” NO, YOU go, because if you or someone else plows into me, it’s my goddamn fault.

Some of the wisest words wrt driving on heard on this board- Don’t be nice, be predictable. Specifically, take your fucking turn. This benefits everyone.