Farewell to Manners and "Doing the Right Thing"

Have we become a nation of people with no manners and no sense of right and wrong?

A couple of months ago, it seemed every time I turned on the local news there was another report of a hit and run accident where a pedestrian was hurt or killed. When did it become customary to accidentally hurt someone and then flee the scene leaving others to pick up the pieces? In the past, that was a rare occurrence and guilt and public indignation was usually enough to bring that person forward right away to confess. Nowadays it seems almost common that people strike a pedestrian with their car, just keep going, and feel they will be none the worse for the wear. These people leave behind a wake of injury or death, and public fury. This is bad manners on acid.

Bad manners have seeped into every aspect of daily life. You wait patiently for a parking space, your signal is blinking, then someone sneaks into it before you can. You are about to enter a public place and the person in front of you lets the door slam in your face instead of holding it for you to grab or even better, gasp, holding it open for you to walk through. Drivers fail to signal for lane changes and turns, cut you off and flip you the bird, honk their horns at you if you haven’t moved a millisecond after the light changes. People are gabbing on their cell phones in all kinds of public places and in some cases having very private conversations using their “outdoor voices.” Do I really want to hear the details of your love life while I am sitting in a bathroom stall? You are at the checkout counter and the cashier is having a conversation with the next cashier and doesn’t even bother to make eye contact with you, the customer. A parent comes to pick up a child that has been to your house visiting one of your children for the first time and instead of coming to your front door to introduce themselves, they notify their offspring via cell phone they are in the driveway and you never see the parent, in fact you barely know the kid has even left your house.

There are a few exceptions to the no manners rule these days. In places where people depend on tips or commissions, good manners still seem to exist. Many restaurants have employees that come out into the lobby to open the door for you. That is nice…it makes up for the lack of random humans doing it for you. Waiters and waitresses are usually polite and courteous. Sadly, that seems like a luxury. There are a select few retail stores where customer service still matters and they hire and train knowledgeable people to be their ambassadors. These places are an oasis in the desert of an uncaring, unintelligent, unmotivated retail workforce. Service oriented businesses have to be courteous or you will not use them again. If a hairdresser, manicurist, or masseuse is rude to you while providing you with their services, not only will they get a lousy tip, they will not see you again. These are situations where we can vote with our wallet. When someone cuts you off in traffic, your wallet is not going to do you any good.

My sons have enlightened me as to what goes on in high school these days. It seems that students do not automatically treat the teachers like they are the authority figure anymore. Students drop F bombs in class with no consequences! They are rude to the teachers and get away with it. In fact it seems unless you pretty much kill someone, you will not be suspended from school. I know that some of the responsibility for the lack of respect lies with the teachers. But a large part of it lies with the parents. Kids who grow up in a house where there are rules, and consequences to breaking those rules, will tend to be the students who understand what is necessary and acceptable behavior in the classroom. Kids who grow up in either a neglectful circumstance or one in which they are free to do what they please, kids whose parents want to be their friend instead of their parent, will have trouble discerning the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior in school. (More about the Parent as Friend topic in another rant).

Back to the poor person lying on the side of the road that has just been hit by a driver that then sped away. I am perplexed as to how anyone could do that to another human being. Nobody wants to have to deal with having just injured someone. It would be scary and traumatic for the driver, not to mention the victim. The driver's fight or flight instinct probably kicks in at that point. Unfortunately, instead of using their brain to override that instinct to flee, a lot of people just leave the scene and let the chips fall where they may. A quote from an Indiana Jones movie comes to mind, "He chose poorly."

I was raised with a strong sense of what is right and wrong, and personal responsibility. If I did it, then I clean it up, I own up to it, it is mine whether that is comfortable for me or not. That is what is currently lacking in our society. Nobody wants to take responsibility for anything that was their doing, their creation, their problem. It is easier to let someone else deal with it and flee the scene. Or is it? I want to believe that deep down eventually the driver in a hit and run accident will start to think about what they did…hurting or killing someone’s loved one, and it will begin to gnaw at them. The fear of being prosecuted may be overshadowed by the fear of living with that guilt for the rest of your life. A large number of these hit and run drivers eventually do turn themselves in. Maybe it is true that good triumphs over evil or at the very least, these days guilt triumphs over irresponsibility.

I hope that someday soon we can reverse the trend of no manners and have a more civilized society again. I miss that!