Manners. They are the littlest thing in this world. The simplest of gestures. The little nuances that makes living in large communities bearable. I ask a very simple question: Why the hell doesn’t anyone still use them?
This is all steaming from a very recent drive through experience at a restaurant with a big yellow lower case m for a logo. I ordered my food, which latter made me feel like a fatty fat fat, and I took time to thank the person on the other end of the speaker when he asked for me to repeat my order three times. I wasn’t upset by this, I saw that they were busy and I understand how crazy things can get during rushes. Instead I calmly pulled my car into the line of traffic and waited for my turn to pay and get my food.
After about a couple minutes wait I was at the window. Again, very calm and centered. The waiting in the line didn’t detract from my Zen. People are cooking food and sometimes that take a bit longer than the nanosecond a majority of the American populous thinks it takes to cook food. I would rather eat safely prepared food rather than not, so if this means waiting then so be it.
Up till now, I have been the picture of calm and rationality. I gave the young gentleman my card and he abruptly handed me it back and as I was putting the card back in my wallet, he practically had the soda in my car as it was inches from my face. I turned and my nose was pressed up against the cup. Never the less, I was calm. I took the glass and placed it in my drink holder, even thanking the young man. I turned again, and that’s when I lost it.
This kid wasn’t even looking at me. Didn’t even acknowledge my presence and as far as he was concern I could have been a Zaxxon from the Crab Nebula and he wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t that I was looking for royal over the top prestige treatment. Rather, I wanted to be acknowledged as a fellow human being with all the niceties that includes. I looked straight at the kid in that window and I said, “Thank you”. But still, this elicited zero response from this gentleman.
I turned down my window, and raised my voice and yelled “Thank you!” all to no avail. He had actually disappeared into the bowels of McDonald’s microwave irradiated kitchen to grab the next trough of food to shove at the fatty in the pickup behind me. Don’t judge – I’m a fatty, that’s why I was at McDonald’s getting their oh so health cuisine. I just got the balls to admit that I’m a fat ass. I sat there and waited, knocking at the window trying to get this kids attention.
After a hot minute, he sauntered back up to the window and uttered the phrase of the given up – “Yeah?” I stared up into his dead cow eyes and said; “Thank you” and I shit you not I watched this kids head explode! He had zero fucking clue as to why someone would actually want to thank him for handing off a bag of cancer causing carcinogens. And that Ladies and Gentlemen lies at the heart of our problem: People are no longer vested in maintaining a level of standards when it comes to exercising manners among one and other.
And that’s a damn shame! Our world is strung together loosely under many concepts that we are suppose to be good to one another. At the bare minimum, these precepts are meant to keep us from wanting to rend the flesh from the face of someone who has offended your gentle sensibilities. People forget that in the core of human nature is a mammalian gathering-hunter-killer that has only had “civilization” for the last 125,000 of its almost 5,000,000 years of human development.
Manners didn’t arise from a need to be polite, but rather a need to not have to feel like stabbing someone in the chest thirty-two times because they had the last piece of cake and you were really, really hungry. You politely ask if anyone else minds if you have that last piece of cake to avoid situations just like this. I mean lets face it, its either use manners or we need to start resorting to more drastic measures like dueling pistols at dawn, or something like that.
Now before you ask, yes I am being highly sarcastic. Partly because I’m just sick of people acting like they are islands unto themselves. It’s like people have blatantly accepted that it’s ok to not acknowledge one another. Honestly, I don’t know why this happened and frankly I don’t care. This is an intolerable social epidemic that I cannot allow to go on any further.
Therefore, I am declaring war on social apathy. If you truly wanted to be left alone in life, you would find a little shack in the mountains of Montana like your patron saint Ted Kaczynski. If you are living within the boundaries of society, then you are subject to the social niceties of that society. Someone says “(God) Bless you” say “thank you”. They are not trying to convert you, they are just being polite. Someone says “Thank you” you look them in the eyes and say “You’re welcome”. Don’t just ignore them. Someone holds the door open for you, thank them. They are doing so out of the kindness of their heart! Do these things, and others, because there is a good chance that it might make you feel a bit more human and connected to your fellow man. Rather than that isolated fucking island that you don’t really enjoy anyway.
