Manners, people! Bring your manners!

Geeze, there are days it just doesn't pay to leave your house!

I only had to be out a couple of hours this morning--refill some prescriptions and pick up a few groceries--nothing major. And while it is a Monday morning, it is a public holiday here, so I expected things to be a bit more crowded than on a normal Monday. It wasn't nearly as busy as I expected, but that was probably because I got to the store as it was just opening.

One sack of groceries--that is all I bought, which isn't much. I was in the queue, waiting for an open till, within a short time. The little automatic queue monitor flashed "6" and the electronic voice intoned "Teller Six" and Hubby and I set off for the till. Oddly, the woman behind us cut in front of Hubby as we headed for the till and when I hesitated a moment to allow him to get around her and catch up with me, she swooped past me and presented herself at Till 6 in my place! Fortunately Till 7 was available so I took my trolley there, but the Rude Cow at #6 never did seem to figure out that she had jumped the queue in such an egregious fashion--she was absolutely shameless--even clueless--about it.

We then had to go to the big market to pick up the prescriptions and I needed a couple of things from there as well. Much to my amazement, a younger version of the Rude Cow from Woolworth's appeared! She and her male companion, apparently oblivious to my big trolley being pushed by PlusSize me (who knew a woman my size could be invisible??), decided to enter an aisle as I was turning into it. My trolley was already more than half way through the turn when they jostled it and leaped in front, rushing past. Good grief--would their worlds have fallen apart if they had waited a whole two seconds while I completed the turn and left them sufficient room to go past without crashing into my trolley? What about the woman who parked her trolley in the middle of an aisle so that nobody could get around it and when I said "excuse me?" to her back, she moved but left the trolley in the middle of the aisle?

What is it with people who behave so badly in public? We were in another store on Saturday morning where someone had let a completely unmannered little girl of about 5 loose. Every aisle I entered, she got there ahead of me and every time I needed to stop to choose something, she managed to park her little body right in front of where I needed to be, doing absolutely nothing except taking up space and refusing to budge even when politely asked to do so. Where were her parents? Why was she allowed to run amok in the store? Where are the kidnappers when you need them?

There was a time when people left their children at home until they could behave in public (do not give me that lame tripe about kids needing to be in public to learn manners and I should be more tolerant. If you are a parent and truly believe that, then you are in desperate need of a course of etiquette yourself!) and if a child transgressed in public, s/he was brought up short, on the spot. Now, parents seem to be unaware that "having a baby" equates to raising (as in teaching, training, disciplining, and paying attention to) a child. Like the bride who doesn't think about the marriage, only the wedding, these parents seem not to look past their expectations of adorable, cooing babies and into the real future of the savage little beasts they are supposed to tame.

These little beasts grow into the thoughtless, self-absorbed Rude Cattle I encountered this morning. From supermarket trolley wars to airline passengers refusing to turn off their phones to women having no shame about dating married men, this "me me me" mindset has just gone too far. Manners are an expression of respect for others--and the idea that strangers have to "earn" your respect is a completely bankrupt, narcissistic, utterly stupid notion--and when you show disrespect for others, you invite them to reciprocate. Discourtesy and disrespect breed further discourtesy and disrespect...it creates a hostile environment. People with good manners will not point your faux pas out to you, as that is just as rude, so you must monitor yourself. Slow down--nothing is so important that you cannot wait 3 seconds for someone or at least say "excuse me" in an apologetic tone of voice as you go past. Think before you stop in the middle of a walking space to chat with a friend, before you leave your trolley in the middle of the aisle then block the rest of it with your body as you leisurely peruse the selections, before you gridlock an intersection because you just cannot wait for the next light, before you cut off another driver or refuse to let someone in--THINK--

You just aren't THAT important that everyone else on the planet should give way to you, now are you??