We, as a society, are too damn polite.

[Santo_Rugger]

@Hal Briston

<snip>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!”

See, that’s like trying not to think of a purple unicorn. Next time, mentally chanting, “don’t say ‘whatever, asshole’”, or “[vulgarity deleted]”. Bet you won’t say thank you!

@HazelNutCoffee

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:

Sounds like the “You, too!” syndrome.

Waiter: Enjoy your meal.
Me: You, too!

Boarding pass taker person: Enjoy your flight.
Me: You, too!

:smack:

[Ravenman]

As far as number two, I don’t see that politeness enters into the problem at all. The customer and the cashier were being impolite by not being attentive to those around them, because they were entirely absorbed in their own flirting at an inappropriate time.

You should have said something like, “Excuse me, there’s a number of people waiting here…” If they were polite, they’d apologize and get on with the ordering and serving; and if they were “too polite,” they’d offer effusive apologies and buy you lunch, making you feel indebted to them.

That’s what I mean by the problem not being created because of too much politeness.

[Maus_Magill]

@dangermom

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.

I think dangermom might be onto something here. The problem isn’t people being polite. The problem is people being friendly. You can be polite without being friendly. For instance, I am always nice and polite, but I secretly hate all of you all. I’ll always say “please,” “thank you,” and “yes ma’am/sir,” but the entire time I’ll have my Venezuelan attack wombats trained on you. So you’d better watch yourself.

[lobstermobster]

@Santo Rugger

See, that’s like trying not to think of a purple unicorn. Next time, mentally chanting, “don’t say ‘whatever, asshole’”, or “[vulgarity deleted]”. Bet you won’t say thank you!

Sounds like the “You, too!” syndrome.

Waiter: Enjoy your meal.
Me: You, too!

Boarding pass taker person: Enjoy your flight.
Me: You, too!

:smack:

haaaaaaaahhaha. I do shit like that all the time.

LobMob: Hey How’s it going?
Some asshole: Just great! How are you doing?
LobMob: Fine thanks, and you?

I try not to listen to what strangers are gibbering at me. Clearly this thread isn’t really applicable to me as you can imagine how polite I am in everyday society. I’m not rude when I meet people through other people or am at a party or at work. But everyday out in the world with strangers is an exercise in not pushing the slow-walkers or the blue-tooth-wearing-distracted-enunciating-with-their-hands-broadly-so-that-they-hit-another-pedestrian-assholes in front of a speeding bus.

[Sauron]

@Ravenman

You should have said something like, “Excuse me, there’s a number of people waiting here…”

No, no, no … What I SHOULD have done was stab the guy with a Maori spear, which in fact is what I did. To think otherwise is to let the overly polite people win.

[Lumpy]

@nd_n8

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

Then you might like this short story by Twain, who had roughly the same idea: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos

[What_Exit]

@Hal Briston

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!”

Go to the dark side and just get EZpass. No more human interaction with an unhealthy dose of Carbon monoxide. So the state can monitor my movement, it is worth it.

Sauron, wonderful rant. As someone that grew up in New Jersey & NYC, living in San Diego use to drive mean nuts. The freaking drivers would stop for me, just because I was waiting to walk across the street. God Damn It, just keep driving and I will walk swiftly across without interfering with traffic like any reasonable pedestrian. San Diego, you are a goddamn city, act like it.

Sampiro, the advantage of being a rude northerner, when an idiot holds up a line in front of me, I say something and if he does not get on with it, I say it louder. It is rare that a few others don’t join in.

Jim

[Hostile_Dialect]

@Santo Rugger

Sounds like the “You, too!” syndrome.

Waiter: Enjoy your meal.
Me: You, too!

Boarding pass taker person: Enjoy your flight.
Me: You, too!

The only people I say this to are the ones who work at movie theatres. I’ve rationalized it pretty well, though: they have free movie tickets and nobody gets tired of free movies, so they’ve probably seen about 36 movies this week already and if it’s a Friday they’ll probably see around 170 more movies by the time Monday comes around. I hope they enjoy their movies as much as I enjoy mine. I’m sure they’ll enjoy theirs more, because the movies will be free. Those bastards.

[Tapiotar]

Magnificent!

@Sampiro

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.

[Beware_of_Doug]

I would say that the OP’s problem is not with people being too polite over all - would any of us really want more thoughtless asshats in our daily lives? of course not - but acting out the form of politeness (“after you”…“no, after you!”) in places where being brisk and businesslike would be the truly considerate thing to do.

If you disagree, of course, you can always go fuck yourself with a dessert fork.

[amarinth]

WRT #2 - you do realize that it was your stupid polite gesture (or mistaken sense of politeness) that was the problem. Before reaching for the spear - a simple “excuse me, my boss will kill me if I don’t get back to work soon.” would have gotten your order taken (and been polite).
Loudly saying “Get out of my way so I can order, you Alabama-rooting moron.” would also have gotten your order taken (though not been polite).
Of course, the spear is more colorful.

[nashiitashii]

@nd_n8

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.

I was driving to work the other day, and one of my fellow drivers going in my direction down “Main Street” decided to wave ahead a guy when there were only stop signs for the guy he was waving along. Because he had stopped long enough to give the stop sign guy the hint, I had to slam on my breaks to keep from causing an accident. Stuff like this happens all the time, as we’ve got a lot of recent immigrants who aren’t entirely sure what the rules are for driving in the US.

I swear, the vast majority of the people who drive in my area are complete morons.

[Sampiro]

@amarinth

Loudly saying “Get out of my way so I can order, you Alabama-rooting moron.” would also have gotten your order taken (though not been polite). Of course, the spear is more colorful.

In Birmingham- 40 miles from Tuscaloosa and hard core Roll Tide country- if he’d said “Alabama rooting moron” this time of year- I’m not sure a Maori spear would have been sufficient.

[si_blakely]

What would have been polite would be to refer to the Maori spear by it’s proper name - it is a taiaha - a wooden sword/spear used in traditional maori combat, along with the mere, a stone or jade flat club.

The elvish warriors at the beginning of LoTR (the movie) use long curved swords in a fashion inspired by the way taiaha are used.

Oh, and you can only carry a taiaha if you wear a knee-length dried grass skirt. Official uniform of the War on Politeness, ya know.

Si

[missred]

I wholeheartedly agree wrt #1! Freakin’ Nashville polite drivers!

The other one that gets to me, is to hear someone say please and thank you to a pet. C’mon, folks, I love Fido too, but to ask him to “please move out of my way” borders on the absurd.

[Scissorjack]

@tagos

I wish my Swiss Army Knife had a Maori spear attachment.

Purely in the interests of fighting ignorance, a Maori spear is a taiaha, and they were used more as clubs or quarterstaves than stabbing weapons. Carry on.

[Tibidabo]

@Sauron

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.

HAHAHAHA!!!

It’s a great day at… “…”

How tremendously gay… I’d love to see the people who *come up * with stuff like this

[GorillaMan]

@gwendee

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.

In these situations, it’s not just a ‘not smart’/‘slap in the face’ decision. It’s about your safety. I just make eye contact, and firmly shake my head, and they’re in no doubt that there’s a reason I’m not going. And they move on.

@Hal Briston

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!”

I recently encountered a toll booth worker who is either the cheeriest friendliest person on the planet or doing a lot of drugs. She was almost starting up a conversation, even though this was a cold damp evening, and I’d got some rather unpleasant music blaring out And none of it was forced, at all. (And no, she wasn’t hitting on me. She was the age of my mother. No.)

[Count_Blucher]

@Sauron

I’ve got my eye on you.

Hurry, Frodo…
“Toll booths? Fly, you fools…!”

[Der_Trihs]

@Mosier

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”.

Irritating as hell. Both because of the insincerity of it, and because it makes me feel like I’m collaborating in humiliating the person forced to say it. I think that Beware of Doug had it right :

@Beware of Doug

I would say that the OP’s problem is not with people being too polite over all - would any of us really want more thoughtless asshats in our daily lives? of course not - but acting out the form of politeness (“after you”…“no, after you!”) in places where being brisk and businesslike would be the truly considerate thing to do.