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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (7402)	4/6/2002 10:43:32 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

We've already covered the subject of the survey on rudeness but I bolded a part of this article on it. I hadn't seen the question of how people respond to it discussed before. I was surprised by the size of the excessive politeness response. Read this, and do it now, or you'll regret it, pal! By Dale McFeatters Shut up, sit down and read this. I don't have a lot of space to waste, and I certainly don't have a lot of time to waste on you. Be grateful I'm doing this at all. A new survey by an outfit called Public Agenda found that eight out of 10 Americans say discourtesy, rudeness and lack of respect are a real problem and that six out of 10 say the problem is getting worse. Where did they conduct this survey? Mayberry RFD? Don't these people get out at all? Of course, it's a national problem, Sherlock. This had been a rude, bumptious nation going back to colonial times. Was it good manners to tar and feather the Tories? They had it coming. And, yeah, it's getting worse. You know why? Good manners buys you trouble. You know why at airports they're always yanking harmless old ladies out of the line for a so-called "random" strip search? Because the old lady will be polite about it. The ornery, simmering people who look like they'll blow up, summon the supervisor and file a lawsuit get waved onto the plane. Yeah, airports profile. They profile the nice people. Serves them right for being well-behaved. If you're polite when the telemarketer calls, you know what? You'll never get them off the line. Good manners say one thing to a telemarketer: "Sucker!" You save your time and theirs by hanging up, but that would be rude. Try a polite reply to an unwanted e-mail. Suddenly you're being spammed by every huckster on the Internet. The people surveyed said there was more coarse language and profanity. Of course there is. We're being provoked more. Example: "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line," followed by 20 more minutes of vintage hits from the Osmond Family. The only sensible response: Bleep. It's late at night, and the ATM machine eats your card, and you say. . . . You get the point. You have to wonder about the people in this survey. More than 4 out of 10 said they're part of the problem and behave badly. More than 40 percent is a lot of rude people, way more than most people encounter. Perhaps if, instead of counting them, Public Agenda had rounded them up and shipped them to Guantanamo, this would be a country that Miss Manners and Emily Post could be proud of. And get this response to a question about what to do when confronted with rude behavior. More than four out of 10 gave the right answer: Just walk away, although this is hard to do if it's a rude cop or a flight attendant. Another 36 percent said they would respond with "excessive politeness," and 20 percent would point out the bad behavior. That means more than half would either be extremely patronizing to the offender or helpfully point out that his mother is a moron. And something else about those surveyed: They lied. Only 17 percent of the cellphone users admitted to being loud and annoying. The correct figure is 98 percent; it would be higher except for the incidence of dead batteries. One woman surveyed was just strange. She blamed Elvis Presley: "It was shocking when Elvis was shaking his hips up there, but now we see whole naked bodies. "It started with Elvis, and that was a little overboard, but that was the beginning of what we have today." Elvis was extremely polite in his small-town Southern way. Imitators invariably do his trademark, "Thank you. Thank you very much." He stood up for women and said "sir" and "ma'am." And nobody was clamoring to see him naked toward the end of his career. The whole bad-manners thing? It's a crock. Hey, look, I'd like to stay around talking to you, but I'm on my own time now. Don't let the door hit you in the back on your way out. * Dale McFeatters is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service.