I used to be one of those people who would call a friend whilst food shopping and although I acknowledged and thanked the checkout person I continued to have my conversation while they served me. I didn't think anything of it till I heard some people talk about it one day saying how rude it was and it got me thinking. It was rude of me. I was basically telling the checkout person: your not worth my attention, my conversation is far more important then you. From that day on I stopped. On the flipside, I find it very rude when the checkout people hold a conversation with a work colleague (or annoying friends not working and standing on the side) and not paying attention to what they're doing or me. Perhaps they've had so many people not paying attention to them that they need to speak to someone.
I am, in many ways a Nanna, but in many others a Gen-Yer. I have grown accustomed to fast internet (I'm no longer used to watching a green bar load at the bottom of my page and if it dares to take longer then 3 seconds to load I glare and curse the day it was created) but I still say please and thank you. If I find I have a spare minute while waiting for something I whip out my iphone and check emails, Twitter, or if I have gone over my internet threshold, play PacMan or Angry Birds. But if someone sneezes I say bless you and hold doors open for people. Not because I'm paving a road to Heaven (although that would be nice thank you, much nicer than the alternative) but because it's courteous and how is holding a door open for someone going to hold me up?
I ask you dear readers, when did it become acceptable to answer your mobile while on the phone to somebody else? This has happened to me many times at work when I will be half way through a conversation and their mobile will begin to ring and I get "Oh, I have to get this, you don't mind waiting?" Sometimes I don't even get that. Why is your time less important then mine? Where are your manners? Why would you start another conversation before you have finished the first one?!
I fear that technology is making us lazy and rude. What's the rush? Recently, my partner was in a fast food chain and watched in amazement as people fumed, waiting for their food. It's called fast food for a reason and yet these people couldn't even wait that long! All three lanes on a freeway are now a Grand Prix racetrack. Road rage is at an all time high. Have you noticed how hardly anyone acknowledges you anymore when you let them into your lane? It's as if it was their right you let them rather then you not being in a rush and being nice and letting them in. Doctors have noticed that we as humans have a severely diminished attention span compared to 20 years ago. Technology is doing all the thinking for us. People joke about cars that will drive for us, but don't joke, they'll probably be released in your life time.
A few months ago I got stared down by a P-platers passenger because the P-plater couldn't merge into my lane when he wanted too. He then proceeded to cut me off and I got the stare down from his passenger. As much as I wanted to give the little so and so the one finger salute, my Nanna gene kicked in and I took the moral high ground and ignored him (have you noticed how road rage incidents have gone up?) We no longer take the time to smell the roses and chill. out.
I like tea, manners, good customer service, 80s pop music and I sometimes cut dates with my partner short because I want to get back to my book, but does that make me a nanna? Or a relic from the dark ages? Or a member of the last generation that remembers what life was like before internet, iphones, GPS, DVDs and when you got slapped for being insolent?
Stepping off soapbox and handing my megaphone to you, what do you all think?
Fear not nana. There are plenty of like-minded people out there. Everything you said has been said by countless generations gone and will be said by the next Generation and the next and the one after that too... take this as a positive that there is movement in life; change; lest we all end up a drab, sterile, Orwellian society (for the readers) or a bland, cowardly, PC society like Demolition man (for the movies buffs) or worst of all, Swiss.
ReplyDeleteIt is an old egg which has been cracked time and again - "Back in my day children respected their elders." Well Sir, back in your day children were brutalised in school and home, "Blacks" had to eat in separate restaurants, "Fags", had to get their kicks in back alleys because they'd otherwise get their kicks in the head; "Kikes", "gooks", "Commies", "Paddies," and the Swiss would all have something to say about "Back in my day".
But enough of that. We're talking about rushing and technologies and no time. No time. When I see some people runnig along with such unnecessary urgency, clutching their iphones, I can't help but be reminded of a certain anxious rabbit charging along with his then technologically advanced pocket watch. Thinks I, "Yo! Rabbit! Hold it right there, my waistcoat wearing furry friend. If you're in such a rush then how come we keep bumping into each other throughout this crazy ride?"
Like the fully sick bro who cuts you off, almost causing an accident in the low-hanging car his nona gave him cus she's too far gone to drive anymore, and yet I still manage to meet him at the next set of traffic lights, while he thrusts and grunts like an young and impetuous asthmatic horny bull. And while we're at it why does his passenger insist on dangling his arm so far out the window that a small part of me thinks... Mmm if I overtake on the inside fast enough I could take it off at the elbow... at least the wrist, for sure.
But look, I too enjoy quiet drinks and conversation at a pub rather than standing for 45 minutes waiting to be served in an overpriced, noisy club because every time I'm about to be served, a stick with breasts comes up and the barman ignores me on the hopes that "this could be the one - sure this 35 year old fart won't mind."
But I comfort myself with that fact that, like Alex and his droogs, people change and mature and realise there is no rush but the rush we put on ourselves, the world is only aggressive because you are aggressive toward the world, until finally they realise, "As you think, so you shall be." (Cue baldy man on mountain looking pleased with himself).
On the not of rushing, allow me to leave you with a story my uncle told me when I was young.
An old bull and a young bull stood on top of a hill looking down into a valley full of cows.
Excited, the young bull says, "Let's run down into that valley and shag one of those cow."
Smiling at the young bull's careless eagerness of youth, the old bull said, "Wait, slow down, I have a better idea. Let's walk down and shag them all."
My first post!!! (sorry, it's a little exciting).
ReplyDeleteI don't think that you are the last nanna, I just think that you have reached a level of maturity that people are finding it harder to reach these days.
Having been on the other side of the fence, I used to suffer from road rage quite heavily, I beleive that you are right in that most people these days have no patience and are in a constant state of rushing. Until people take the time to slow down, they don't mature past the adolescent "mememenownownow" into the more adult attidudes of "we, us, when i can".
It seems almost to me to be like a drug addiction. People with a drug addiction that starts in their teenage years don't mature until they are able to beat said addiction and start to grow again. Until people are able to step back from their techno/electronic addictions, they are unable to function in a civilized way as they are unable to learn common courtesies that civilization requires.
So, you are not the last nanna, and you won't be. More and more people are being nanna'ised each day, driven to it as more and more children are being born and grow into the rude, obnoxious people we know and despise.