I swear, I think I am getting old. I wonder these days what ever happened to common civility and manners. Can I blame technology?
People walk down the street with their eyes glued to the screen on their phone; they don't look where they are going. When you say, rather loudly "EXCUSE ME" before they barrel into you, they look up and often times as not GLARE at you, as if YOU are the problem. Heaven forbid you should interrupt their VERY IMPORTANT text message about a sale at Macy's.... My husband calls it the Zombie apocalypse.
More than once this weekend, in restaurants, I have wanted to walk over to grown adults and say "USE YOUR INSIDE VOICE" This is particularly true of people who still do the "cell yell" I am not sitting with you, I don't need to hear the details of your conversation from across the room. One woman was having a conversation with a woman she was sitting with at a tiny table that was so loud I wondered if she were talking on her cell phone, but no she was shouting at her dinner companion about a party she was planning. I wanted to ask her what time we should all be there and what I should bring.
As we approach the frantic holiday season, even the grocery store is hard to navigate. Every year I complain that there is so much CRAP piled in the aisles that you can't get a cart down it. I have been know to move displays to the center of the aisle to get to the thing one the shelf - that is NOT what is in the display- and LEAVE IT THERE. Complaint to the store, only result in change for the moment. Once they had so much product piled in front of the shelves you couldn't GET to the shelves. Any of them in this particular aisle. I realize you may have too much stock, but you aren't going to sell it that way. Sometimes I worry that the place is a fire hazard, or the Collyer Mansion.
My invisibility superpower is in full force in the stores. Yesterday, this woman sailed her cart down the center of the aisle, almost hitting me. "EXCUSE ME! I called out to her, as proper manners SHOULD have elicited a similar response, but NO, she didn't even acknowledge my presence. Hmm, I wonder how I can use this superpower for good in the coming month of holiday insanity. I have to think about that one.
Well, I had to google "Collyer Mansion," and it sounds fascinating - crazy, yet fascinating. Robyn, you hit on MANY of my pet peeves. I have a theory. People are SO attuned tot heir little technical toys that interacting with real people is foreign to them, and they don't really know how. Additionally, most people (luckily, younger than us, have progressive hearing loss, due to their toys, again. Still, I hate it! People are not living in the NOW. WHAT is it that is so wonderful where you are not? What may someday become an iconic example is Jessica Simpson's sister, on her cell phone, leaving her own wedding. To WHOM could she have been speaking - someone she didn't invite? We are doomed! Tom
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