Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Journal FortKnox's Journal: Politeness 40

Journal by FortKnox
You know what is truely sad? When I go out all day, return back, and my (18 month old) son is more polite than everyone else I've been with throughout the day.

We've taught him to say please (more like "PEAS"!), thank you ("cank ew"), and welcome ("gelcum")[1]. He almost says "excuse me" when he belches, but it sounds more like "beep beep" which I guess probably makes it more worse than better ;-)

Anywho, what ever happened to saying "Thanks" or "Thank you" or "You're welcome" or even "no problem"?

Does politeness die from age, or are we just in a 'no time to be polite' generation?

[1] Actually, there was quite a bit of confusion, here. He used to say 'thank you' by repeating what we said. But after a while we started saying "you're welcome" when he said thank you, so he thought he was supposed to say 'welcome' instead of thank you when you handed him something (got all that?) ;-). I think we finally got him squared away, but its wierd having to teach by mime instead of explanation...
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Politeness More

Politeness

Comments Filter:
  • Once someone does it, itt spreads quickly. I used to always be polite about holding doors for people around campus, but after having the door swung back in my face one too many times I just don't bother anymore. It's a shame, really, because it would take such little effort to improve things, but everyone feels like their actions don't matter compared to everyone else's.
    • I still hold doors. I will comment if people walk through it without saying anything, or making eye contact. If there are multiple doors, a simple, "If you don't want to acknowledge me, there are other doors that don't open for you."

      Not being rude, but being terse, is a pretty good way to get your point across.

      Most people are rude, most people are assholes. Just because they are, doesn't mean you should join them. Like you said, it doesn't take much effort to improve things, and if 99% of the people i
  • You hold a door open for a woman, she yells at you calling you "a scumbag NAZI," you stop holding open doors for women.

    You say, "Thank you," the idiot recipeint one ups you, "No, thank _you_," you sopt sayinig Thank You.

    You answer "I'm not interested," to a telemarketer, they call again, and again, you tell them if they call again you'll pull their fucking jaw off and slice their throat with their own teeth, _they_ stop calling.
  • I always, ALWAYS order from a store with "Could I have ..., please?" It's just a thing. And always a thank you. I say thank you to the goshdarned automatic 411 voice, because I know that there is a human on the other end listening.

    I cannot stand the following:

    "Yeah, give me....uhhh....."

    "I'll have....."

    I always want to respond with "You'll have nothing unless you ask nicely for it, dickhead." or "Give you? GIVE you? Blow me." Pardon my french.

    Once upon a time I was over my parents house watching

    • I always, ALWAYS order from a store with "Could I have ..., please?" It's just a thing.

      Ditto. My dad would drill it into our heads that we should be saying please and thank you always. When my ex started coming over for dinner, she would say "Pass the ..." to which the old man would make a big deal and demand that she ask again with using "please". (He actually does that with anyone who comes over for dinner. It's his thing.) Four months later, she shocked her family when she asked for something using ple
      • Call me old fashion, but I still hold doors, use please/thank you and try to smile to other people. Sometimes you just need a smile or a small gesture from someone else to turn the day around.

        Most appropriate place to use "Thank you", by the way, is when the person in front of you walks through the door and lets it close without so much as looking back to see if it's about to whack you in the face. That always merits a "THANK YOU!" from me.

        :)

      • Sometimes you just need a smile or a small gesture from someone else to turn the day around.

        My philosophy, also.

        In fact, I try to be OVERLY polite, especially at work. I always use 'sir' and 'mame' everywhere (even at the cashier to my local garage, and even if she's a teenager). Cause sometimes I'm having a crappy day, and she'll smile back at me for thanking her, and it'll just turn the day around.

        People like it when you are polite to them, and you gain just a bit more respect in people's eyes f

      • Call me old fashion, but I still hold doors, use please/thank you and try to smile to other people. Sometimes you just need a smile or a small gesture from someone else to turn the day around.

        That has to be the smartest thing I've heard all day... I walk to work every day, and some days I'll be feeling crap, and then one of the people I walk past most days walking their dog will smile, or say good morning, and I'm ready to get on with the day.

        On a similar note, I'm a support tutor on an IT course being ru

    • Did you ever get the lesson that "You can have something . . . but may you have it is a different story."

      "Can I" involves your physical ability to be the recipient of the action, whereas "May I" involves the willingness of the party on the giving end to initiate the action with you.

      I remember getting that lesson in linguistics when I was little. Not sure when or why.

      jason
      • Exactly. One of my English teachers, Mr. Vine, would drive home the "can I"/"may I" difference to us everytime he was the one who answered the staffroom door.

        If you asked "Please can I speak to Mr. White", he'd reply "Of course you can speak to him", but would continue to stand there in the doorway until the proper question was asked. If you asked "Please may I speak to Mr. White", he'd ask Mr White to come to the door for you.

        Personally, I believe that manners should be taught in the home. Unfortunately,
    • Once upon a time I was over my parents house watching Jeopardy. I like it when people say "Shakespeare for $600 please, Alex." So some grumpy old guy is saying "Shakespeare. $600." and I say "Please, moron. Shakespeare for $600, please. I hate it when people don't say please."

      Jeopardy is no place for politeness, not when you're down to the $600 questions anyway. It's all about speed and making sure you can get through all the questions. I hate it when people rattle off the whole category name "Roman I
  • I am extremely polite to people I don't know or see in public. I am a "Yes, sir/ma'am. No sir/ma'am. Please. Thank you. You're welcome, Excuse me, Pardon me, I'm sorry" type guy. I hold doors for strangers and offer others loose change when they need it so they don't have to break larger bills in line at stores.

    Conversely, with my friends, I am usually the rudest and crassest bastard on earth. My friends and I often do the 'burn game' to the point of tears (tears of laughter for most, tears of pain and
    • That sounds exactly like me. I always wonder why I'm so horribly mean to my friends and nice to total strangers! :)

      However, I know how some of the other people posting here feel because sometimes I get sick of everyone being rude; however, if everyone is thinking that it just becomes more and more of an excuse for more people to be rude and no one remembers politeness anymore. So, I've consciously decided to remain polite as I was taught by my parents, regardless of how rude other people are to me.
    • I'll chime in with the "me too" as well. Provided the person in question hasn't done anything to slight me, and strangers usually haven't, I'm nice and polite. I say no problem rather than you're welcome, though it's a matter of my not wanting to imply any sort of obligation on their behalf, it really isn't a problem if I say so. For people I'm actually going out of my way for then I'll say you're welcome.

      On the other hand I'll not hold back with my friends, and it's never a problem, even with the target be

  • I make eye contact and nod/smile with people on the street. I make small talk with Cashiers. I hold doors. I say thanks and "no problem" (and if you have a problem with "no problem" you can go FUCK yourself) I try not to be too much of a dick on the road (ohhh, but the things I say about your mother when you drive speed limit or slower in the left hand lane!), I am patient with clueless phone help and mildly officious "rule enforcers" who are only doing their job.

    Despite having others take advantage of
  • There is something that happens at the I-75 bridge, people north of it suck and people south of it are cool (mostly). Move to NKY is all I can say, its like cinci-lite.

  • I'm polite. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TechnoLust ( 528463 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <tsulonhcet.iak>> on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @02:56PM (#7504027) Homepage Journal
    I'm polite. I say please and thank you. I tell the cashiers to have a nice day before they have the chance to say it to me. I remember the names of my servers (as in waiter/waitress, not my linux box) and call them that instead of "hey you" or "miss". I tip well. I hold doors. I will walk older people to their cars under my umbrella if it's raining.

    Why do I do all this? Because I wear a little wooden cross on my neck. I'm representing Jesus to these people, and Jesus would not be impolite, so what right do I have?

    • I do all those things aswell. Why? Because it makes me feel good. I've never understood why people need to do good in the name of their religion when they can simply do good.

      • I don't do it the name of religion. I do it because I have a relationship with Jesus and He says that to show love to others is to show love to Him. I can't explain WHY, the only way you would understand is to get to know Him.
    • I'm polite. I say please and thank you. [...]

      Why do I do all this? Because I wear a little wooden cross on my neck.

      I do much the same, though for different reasons. I do it because it is the right thing to do. First and foremost I am representing me. By making the world a nicer place for those around me, it reflects back on to me, making my journey through this world a much nicer one.

      Being nice to waitresses and bar staff has many, many benefits. I get better, friendlier, prompter service. If my day h
  • are we just in a 'no time to be polite' generation?

    i think you hit the nail on the head. but i see it spreading across the generations. older people get tired of rude young people, so they sometimes cave in. many rude kids are being raised by rude parents. the most irritating thing to me is that they have no concept of politeness. they don't even think they are rude because they don't know what it means to be polite. they are so focused on what they are doing that they just don't stop to consider an
  • The thing is, in my experiences with German society, politeness has been reduced to just the words: people are expected to say Danke schoen, Bitte schoen, Gern geschehen and so on ("thank you very much", "you're welcome", "it was my pleasure")...but it's amazing how, at least in northern Germany, it's usually said in a deadpan get-this-over-with tone of voice. IOW it quite often is just a going-through-the-motions sort of politeness that is in many ways more aggravating (while gestures like holding open a d
  • In a way, I'm almost pleased that society is less polite in general. It gives me an edge for almost no effort on my part. Being polite, in economic terms, lowers the friction of transacting. Being pleasant, especially when things go wrong, simply gets results in a way that no amount of shouting can. Maybe it's because it catches people off their guard, but more likely, if you treat people with courtesy, they will reciprocate.

    In a restaurant, you can always tell a person with real class by the way they trea
  • Politeness should come from a desire to be considerate to those around you, rather than a need to feel superior to those ingrates lining the streets day after day. Here's a tip to discover which category you fall into: if somebody does not respond to your politeness to your liking do you:

    a) move on with your day
    b) make a catty remark regarding their ungrateful ass.

    If (b), you are being polite only for the response that you garner. The rudenss with which you respond makes you out to be much less of a pol
    • I would hate to think that women who get doors held open for them would cop some sort of political attitude about it. It's a nice gesture. Accept it and move on.

      And for the record, I open doors for everyone -- male female, old, young -- whenever I have the chance. And in these parts, the favor is almost *always* returned. Being female, I'll never know if the person holding the door open for me is doing so out of chauvinism or politeness, but seeing as how it's challenging enough coralling a 3-year-old aro
  • When I voted in the general election on November 4, an elderly female polling official demanded: "Lemme see your voter registration card and a picture id."

    It was 715am. The only thing I was there for was to vote NO to a sales tax increase, and this woman acted like she had the power of a SS storm trooper.

    I had my wallet out, but I stopped in my tracks. I stared her down and said "Please?"

    "What?" she retorted.
    "Please may I see your voter's registration card and a picture ID. Your authority does not gi

  • I was raised to be polite, friendly, kind, etc. toward strangers. My dad's side of the family was in the restaurant business (Grandpa, uncle, and my dad (some)). So as a part of growing up, it was pressed on us kids to be nice to waitresses, and by extension, everyone. We kids had a happy childhood. We were also raised to have the kind of manners that would acceptable in polite company. (My grandma knew the Gallo family (Modesto, CA - wine), and wanted me to marry one of the granddaughters, but I digess. Th
  • In general, I find that by being my sunny, happy self, I can affect people within my little radius, for the better. When I hold a door for someone and smile (where I come from, door-holding has nothing to do with gender, and everything to do with proximity), I almost always get a smile in return. It's like Ethelred said, maybe it's the difference between being polite and friendly. I believe in being downright friendly.

    We live in this crazy insular society, full of fear of 'engagement'. It seems to me th

  • We have ingrained good manners into Kiddo, as well, to the point where she even realizes that her tone of voice makes a difference.

    When making a request for something, she sometimes has to be reminded to "ask nicely," in which case she will reiterate her request in the form of "Momma, can I please have some [whatever], pleeeeease?" in a singsong voice. We make jokes about Eddie Haskell, but I can't *abide* children who *demand* things of their parents (and then their parents hand it over!!). Thank you and
    • refer to all grownups as "Miz Mary" or "Mister John."

      Joey will probably follow from my upbringing. People we (meaning me and the wife) know is Aunts and Uncles. My former roommates who stop by will be "Uncle Rob" and "Uncle Wolf". They aren't related, but being good friends get the extra respect. People they don't know are "Sir" or "Mame" until told otherwise.
  • I try to be polite to everyone. Holding doors, saying please and thank you, asking not demanding, etc. And I've noticed that many people will at least thank you for helping them. If nothing else, you may just inspire that person to help someone else during the day.

    I'm of the mindset that "we're all in this together, let's make the best of it" and how better to accomplish this than doing the little things that people have seemingly forgotten about.

    Although, I was a Boy Scout...and you know their addage

  • ...descended from Scottish nobility, I am renowned for my politeness.

  • My son, when he was about 18 months old did exactly what your son does. Please and Thank-you (actually it was "Pease" and "Finks") were even heard when he was semi-comatose in the middle of the night asking for a drink of water.

    But he got over it. There is a certain F___ -you attitude you see in most large urban areas these days. I think it has to do with the unlikeliness that we'll ever see one another any time soon.

    I think it's unusual to see a happy attitude among those who have to deal with the pub
  • I'm surprised that I never read this until today.

    I think that politeness & courteousness are so important. They are the grease that gets us what we need & where we want to go.

    A perfect example of this is when I go shopping. I finish the transaction with, "Thanks very much. I appreciate your service.", or something more relevant to the situation. I try to let my my emotions & body language reflect the type of interaction that we've had already: if we were happy, then I'll try to be happy; if we

Slashdot Top Deals

If you think the system is working, ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.

Close