Manners, People!

Wow, has it really been this long since my last post? Guess I've been really busy!

This will be a "letting off steam" post. Not very interesting, so you may want to skip. I'm going to rant. I'm reading Facebook posts for a client (I maintain their Facebook pages) and I'm growing more and more appalled at how nasty people are nowadays! No forgiveness, no ignoring things that irritate you, no diplomacy, no stopping to think yours isn't the only opinion that counts. Just lashing out. And doing it publicly. On Facebook, Twitter, and many other social media outlets.What is wrong with people?

One Facebooker posted a gripe, saying she hated it when cashiers commented on her purchases. She went on to say it wasn't their business what she was making for dinner or how many cats she had. She was so irritated that she wrote her post in caps, with lots of exclamation points. She was really wound up. I mean, come on! The clerk was only trying to be friendly with a little innocuous chit-chat. In fact, one grocery store clerk even commented that customer service was important and that small talk was just a clerk's way of being friendly.

The other day I was half a second too slow after the red light turned green, and the guy behind me honked his horn impatiently. A month earlier I was waiting for a person to finish backing out of his parking spot so that I could claim it. I had my blinker on. Nobody else was around. But when the car had finished backing out, and as I started to pull into the spot, a woman in a huge SUV came out of nowhere and cut me off, zooming into the spot. She knew very well I had first dibs. And recently I was in the grocery store, headed for the checkout stand. There were several long lines, and I was turning my cart into another line when another shopper barged in front of me with her cart. There's no way she didn't know I was technically in line ahead of her.

What is it with people? What is it with people???