Hey, Jerk! Try lightening up a bit

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Hey, Jerk! Try lightening up a bit Rudeness is on the rise, and Kevin Merida is wondering why. After all, surly behavior just inspires more of the same.

Kevin Merida - Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Professors are reporting more rudeness in college classrooms. Rudeness on the job is up, too. Rudeness on the road is chronic. Airports are virtual rudeness factories. Cell phone rudeness is -- how do I put this? -- off the hook. I know teenagers who would rather reprogram their Nokia than talk to their grandmother who is in the same room.

I was recently driven to fury when a mortgage broker hung up on me -- "Thanks for wasting my time," he said -- after he lost my business. I had to wonder to myself: What made him think he could do that?

The polling on impoliteness over the last several years is extensive: In one study that reported a decline in workplace civility since the late 1980s, 52 percent of those aggrieved said they lost time at work worrying about rude behavior. That same study, conducted by University of North Carolina management professor Christine Pearson, found that men instigate rudeness 70 percent of the time. A Public Agenda poll released this month found that 79 percent of adults surveyed say lack of respect and courtesy in our society is "a serious national problem."

Courtesy doesn't cost anything, and it takes such little time to dispense. Rudeness, on the other hand, is a gift that keeps on giving in the worst way. Someone is insolent to you, you go home and snap at your wife, your wife is short with the baby sitter, the baby sitter takes it out on her boyfriend.

At some level, those who are surly or insulting must get a measure of gratification from their behavior -- revenge for some perceived slight, a moment's pleasure knowing they stomped on someone else's mood. We know that some people are rude for kicks -- all you have to do is log on to the Internet, and you'll find home pages for such beasts as the King of Rudeness. We also know that cultivating an image as a bad boy or jerk or provocateur can yield rewards in our society. Jerry Springer, Dennis Rodman and Howard Stern come to mind.

But what explains why, to take one incident a colleague conveyed, a customer at a hardware store would berate a 3-year-old girl who's sitting on the floor and playing with her stuffed animals? What explains why some people are always looking over your shoulder -- not at you -- in conversation at social functions, as if searching for someone else to talk to? Why a driver can't sacrifice a few seconds to let a fellow traveler into his lane?

Peter Suber, a philosophy professor at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., has studied rudeness. A lot of it, he says, "reflects emotional anger and frustration when we perceive that our interests are threatened. It can be averted by peaceable people who are slow to anger, or by civilized people who can control their anger while they try reasoning or negotiation. But some situations don't allow reasoning or negotiation, such as when someone cuts us off in traffic, and in other situations even patient people can find their anger or frustration momentarily more powerful than their self-control."

He also suspects that rudeness "often arises from lack of imagination. People rude to waitresses, store clerks or business rivals find it easier to classify them as servants or enemies than to imagine their humanity more fully."

"Still," Suber says, "we shouldn't forget that some people are never rude: This is not an unattainable ideal. It requires not only patience and emotional maturity, but a habitual determination to find the next step forward rather than pause for retaliation."

I suspect retaliation was on the mind of my mortgage broker; I had just told him that I had lost faith in him and was going to let a broker at another firm handle the refinancing of my house. Not only did the new broker offer me a better rate, but I had grown to trust her more.

A while after my original broker hung up on me, I called him back to ask him about it. It was clear he was still upset. He explained that after working on my loan for several weeks, it was a "slap in the face" for me to pull out. My reasons for pulling out didn't matter to him. "I lost it," the broker said. "It was unprofessional to hang up on you. It was pure frustration."

But he added: "I don't know if I would define hanging up on you as rudeness. Ninety-nine percent of the time we dealt with each other, I'd say I was cordial, responsible, friendly. I got frustrated at the last second."

Sometimes that's all it takes to ruin someone's afternoon.

Kevin Merida is a Washington Post columnist.



-- Anonymous, April 23, 2002

Answers

David, I was quite amused to see this show up at TB, given the tensions there lately. I'll bet your thread title took a few back for a bit! ;^)

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2002

And the worst examples of all are the political "discussion" shows on TV. I haven't seen Crossfire since Carville and Begala went on, but I hear it's pretty loud. I particularly hate that whining woman who's been spouting the Palestinian side, often see her on Fox. You can't shut her up.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2002

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