Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

The late Dick Beddoes once wrote a line about a man who "exhibited a rudeness which is the weak man's imitation of strength."

I guess it's not surprising to anyone that there are a lot of rude and ignorant people out there.

With a couple of exceptions, we were all taught manners as kids. Usually by our parents, and then the lessons were reinforced by other adults we encountered, such as teachers, coaches, youth group leaders, etc.

How many times did you have a teacher tell you personally, or the class in general, that you were being rude? Most teachers were sticklers for manners, although many of them failed to practise what they preached. One of my teachers routinely called students (myself included) stupid, once addressed a young lady in the class as "you horse" and told me my father was a fool (my father certainly had his faults, but stupidity was not among them).

In most cases, children are taught manners, but allowing them to drop to the bottom of the agenda on occasion seems to be a right of passage along the road to what is commonly known as maturity, just like getting your first driver's licence, credit card and hangover.

Now I don't want to come off as sounding preachy. I am fully aware that I don't always practise good manners. We all have our bad days, which means we lapse now and then and fail to behave up to our own expectations. There have been plenty of times when I realized stress or other problems were getting the better of my manners, and in such cases, I usually try to get back into control. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I don't. Who among us does better?

But I sometimes get annoyed, if not livid when I see the way some people chuck their manners. I am left to wonder who they think they're impressing, or what they're accomplishing.

Over the years, I have seen a lot of these folks, both in my work in the media and waiting tables, which is what I used to do.

You will see a lot of bad manners when you're serving food and drink to people who have had a few too many. That included people who would just shout orders across the floor, sometimes with language that I can't use in this forum. I well remember one night when I was tending bar for a banquet. There were a couple of lovely young ladies (meaning about my age in those days) who got their noses out of joint because I caught them trying to jump ahead in line.

"You really know how to treat a lady, don't you," one of them spat at me, as I served the people who were actually in line.

I started to politely respond, but she didn't let me.

"Oh (something) off," she yelled in a most ladylike fashion as she threw her drink tickets in my face.

The amusing part of it came a couple of minutes later when the other girl approached me (jumping the queue again) and politely asked for her tickets back.

"Where do you suppose they are?" I asked, letting my indignation at being spoken to so ignorantly get the better of me for the moment.

"I . . . er . . . I think they bounced off your head," she said with what passed for an ingratiating smile (I think I saw her very best effort at being contrite).

There were many other incidents like that, but it is a fact that such antics go with the territory. Was not "Insulting the Waiter" one of the events Monty Python dreamed up for the Upper Class Twit of the Year competition? (In the book, not the TV sketch.)

And if you're going to work in the media, you had better get used to to the rantings of ignorant people, especially if you're editor of a newspaper that takes stands of things like sewers. I'm not referring to the reactions of people who hold different opinions, but to the reactions of people who are intolerant of opinions that differ from their own.

Actually, there are advantages to being an editor

over a waiter. A waiter has an occupational obligation to be polite, while your friendly editor needs to be only guided by the good manners that are the topic of this piece.

"You're obviously smarter than everyone else!" one irate reader once lashed out to me over the phone, in what was part of a string of verbally abusive remarks I had been putting up with for a couple of minutes.

"Obviously," I mildly replied.

That phone conversation ended a couple of seconds later

Sometimes being rude might pay off, but more often, I think there's really just short-term benefit. The perpetrator might feel good for having come up with a good put-down. I'll confess there have been a couple of times when the perfect comeback to some insult has come to me at the exact moment I needed it. There have been occasions when I've regretted it later, and others that I have bragged about. I don't know for sure why there would be that divergence, unless maybe deep down I realize there are some people who are really more deserving of a wise-guy come back than others.

But the reality is such action is often counter productive. One customer I was serving in my table-waiting days didn't like the way his food had been prepared, and told me to stick you-knowwhere. The upshot was the manager overheard the altercation, and the man left the eatery hungry.

There was an occasion when my family took a relative visiting from Ireland to a nice restaurant. My mother

had made the reservations, specifying the table she wanted. There was evidently a mix-up and that table was not available. My father took the guy in charge of the dining facility aside and spent the next couple of minute berating him. I don't know what my dear old dad was hoping to accomplish, but the fact is we didn't get a better table.

I saw another example much more recently. I was in a large supermarket in the city, standing near the flower section. A man was evidently less than pleased with some of the flowers he had purchased, and was letting everyone in the store know it. First he yelled at the clerk, then demanded to see the manager. A young fellow who identified himself as the manager showed up after a couple of minutes, and the over-aged flower child started into him for taking too long. The manager, I think was trying to get the discussion on track when the customer set a new level of ignorance by telling him to "shut up."

Now I think this young manager was dealing with some conflicting impulses. I saw in the flash of his eyes indicating a desire to respond in kind. But he also had the good sense to disengage and just ask the lout to leave.

He didn't pass me on the way out, and had he done so, I expected him to advise me not to shop in the store. I was ready to respond by telling him to mind his manners.

Fortunately, I didn't get the chance.

Sometimes removing the provocation will prevent someone from being rude.