Where has “Be Kind to your fellow man” gone?
When two people are approaching a door, common courtesy has taught us to open and hold the door for the other person. Very seldom do I see that anymore.
While on the plane, pax will say “I’ll have a water, coke, etc” without saying please, and heaven forbid I happen to be in the aisle when someone is trying to get by me to use the lavatory. They squish, push and shove their way by me, while I’m holding a tray of drinks precariously over someones head. Now if I was to drop a drink on someone while doing that, you can bet your sweet bippy they would get mad at me.
I notice things all day long when I’m away, little things that discourage me about the nature of the human being. The lack of thank yous, please, excuse me’s. The mans foot that is out in the aisle, and I trip over it, and then I look back at him, and he’s not looking up, no “I’m sorry” or “excuse me”. His foot is still there!! I have to ask him to PLEASE (and this is what is annoying, they insist on politeness to be given to them) move his foot out of the center aisle. Amazing!!
When people enter a plane, some must think that they have waiters, waitresses and a cleaning staff at their disposal. While in the middle of the FAA mandated emergency demo, it never fails that someone will ask if I can take their trash, or get them a pillow/blanket. Aren’t they supposed to be listening to the demo? (I know some people hear it all the time, just pretend to listen to us!) When we hand out snacks, if one doesn’t want what we’re offering, does it hurt to look at us and say no thank you? Majority of the time, I get the “top of the head shake” or the “if I look straight ahead, maybe they won’t see me and I won’t have to make eye contact and answer”. Also, I wear my iPod ALOT.. I know people can hear over it, if not there’s a thing called peripheral vision.
When I worked at reservations (PRC) I thought politeness had flown out the window and rudeness was the norm. I had the naive thought that there was no way someone would be rude in person the way they were on the phone. While I was at res, I had been called every name in the book, threatened, cursed at and hung up on. The pax thought that by being rude or gruff, (however one wants to put it) they would get their way. It’s quite the opposite. The nicer the person, the more I’ll be willing to bend over backwards for them. Maybe someday people will learn that they’ll get more from honey than from vinegar (unless they’re picklefaced to start with)
As you can read, this subject is one of the few that gets me hot under the collar.. We won’t talk about the other ones, it’s already hot enough outside!!