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Also about trustworthiness in the sense that if I have to play by the arbitrary rules of the game, others should too. Ever since my state (the people’s republic of nanny) banned drivers from talking on their cell phones while driving, I’ve gotten annoyed when I see others doing it. That many of them seem to be, um, visibly different from me and driving nicer cars than I doesn’t help.
My pet peeve is when I go take a walk at a park and someone’s dog runs at me because it’s not on a leash even though there are signs up saying please keep your dog on a leash. I was savagely attacked by a dog as a child and am momentarily paralyzed with fear whenever this happens. The dog owner always laughs and says their dog won’t bite. Why don’t they understand that it’s not up to them to decide which park rules they follow? A dog is an animal and you can never predict how it’s going to act so you can’t leave it up to individual owners to be the judge. Thousands of people are bitten every year because a dog owner had bad judgement and let a dangerous animal roam loose.
Point?
I agree with Mark. This seems to be happening with greater frequency in recent years. As people substitute dogs for children, dog owners have become more self-centered. In the past decade, I have been chased/menaced/nearly attacked by “harmless” dogs at least half a dozen times. Animals react strangely to runners.
Dogs… earlier this summer an ageing fratboy type came to a crowded park where we were watching an adult league softball game, with a pitpull and let it off the leash. The dog pranced right up to me and my three year old son. I got in front of my boy and stuck my arm in front of the dog, saying sternly GO! The owner said “it’s ok, she’s friendly.” I said “No genius, she is not friendly. She’s a pitbull. Put her on the goddamn leash now.” He sheepishly and sincerely apologized, leashed her up, and I told him that pitbulls are unpredictable. It may be friendly one second, the next second it may smell a kid’s fear and lunge.
A second “Trust and Focus” story… 1999, crawling stop and go along the Cross-Bronx Expressway, headed north to Boston. In my rearview mirror I see a short fat Mexican guy behind the wheel of his car making out with a short fat Mexican chick. I chuckled, until he tapped my bumper at 0.05 MPH. I get out to look, he does too, with worry on his face. No damage, so I say “no importa” and get back in my car. The traffic moves a little, I look back… the dude is back to making out ‘n driving. “Shit,” I thought, “let this be my lesson in HBD.”
Just kidding. This was 99, I knew nothing of HBD. I was just surprised that he didn’t seem to take a lessons-learned from the earlier collision. Changed lanes as soon as possible so that he’s no longer behind my car.
I had such an experience several weeks ago. My girlfriend and I were at some grocery store that had a unique line system, apparently the lines had different colors and when you were at the front of your line and your color was called you would proceed to the available register. However, the color monitors were hanging from the ceiling and I failed to notice them; I don’t typically look up at the ceiling when I’m at the grocery store. When our color was called we failed to go to the appropriate register until some people behind us in line angrily told us that we were up. We probably delayed things by about 10 seconds, but judging from the stares and vocal tones of the other customers you’d think we committed some terrible crime or huge faux pas.
Mark,
I used to do a bit of trail running and occasionally unleashed and leashed dogs would run up to me. I was never bitten, thankfully, but some of those owners seemed oblivious to their dogs behavior. Sometimes the dog barked and growled at me and the owner while restraining the dog (oftentimes a sizable one) would say something like, “No need to be worried. Ole killer here’s as gentle as a lamb”. It was like the owner didn’t realize the dog was growling at me.
What’s the point of this, were you trying to be profound?
Yes, I wrote this with full belief that everyone would be forced by the strength of my keen insight to give me a standing ovation from their computer desks.
They are just trying to reassure you and themselves, and feel less uncomfortable. The worst thing they could do with an agitated dog is get anxious themselves.
Cell phones are only annoying when the user gives higher priority to the person on the other end of the call, or text than is due to the situation around them. If you’re in a face-to-face conversation or conducting a transaction (as in a check-out at the grocery store or at a bank) the people in the vicinity deserve the priority. Driving ALWAYS deserves the priority.
The system is designed to allot time each of us according to the time required. Time to buy your groceries, time to pass through an intersection, etc. etc. Maybe you’re an ass and aren’t paying attention, costing the people behind you 10 seconds. That’s annoying because it isn’t YOUR 10 seconds. If I’m 7th in line and everyone in front of me takes 10 seconds longer to conduct their business, that’s one minute that you jerks have cost me. Productivity goes down. I don’t care if your on the phone to your sister about dinner tomorrow with your parents, or doing your lipstick or playing angry birds on your ipad, you’re costing other people time. It’s rude. When I miss a green light because the guy in front of me is driving too slow, he is causing me to be less productive by not following the rules. It doesn’t matter why he’s distracted.
It’s because of a lack of courtesy toward others in society that governments keep making more laws. Personally, I like to follow rules, but only when the rules make sense. I don’t mind four-way stops when they’re placed well, but I hate it when it seems like every intersection needs on so that people start gliding through. But, people don’t drive responsibly so the government steps in with more “safety measures”.
I partly agree with you, culdesachero and I’ve gotten angry at people who don’t follow proper etiquette, but I realize that I’ve been there myself. I too have made mistakes, but, for the most part, the time I lose really isn’t that significant.* My day isn’t planned down to the minute. Even if it were, as de Gaulle is claimed to have said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
*Tangentially, back when I was younger I was afraid of interrupting people and wasting their time. At least that was one of the reasons why I wouldn’t approach and hit on girls at bars or pretty much anywhere. I was worried that I would bother people if I talked to them. It took me some time to realize that most people (myself included) aren’t that important. The girls I talk to at the bar aren’t discussing the cure for cancer. The guy I make small talk with on the corner wasn’t rushing off to to the hospital to perform brain surgery.
I always get a twinge of satisfaction out of watching the person in front of me at the grocery checkout get visibly bent out of shape when I (unbeknownst to them), deliberately don’t put the plastic divider between the end of their, and beginning of my groceries. Some people even have the balls to give a look (usually the same look you got for talking in the library in 5th grade), and I just smile in their stupid face!
Well spotted, as always, GLP. There are many modern behaviours that anger me, but this is one of the things guaranteed to drive me to distraction.
Just today, for example, I was forced to use my motor car’s horn not once but twice [!!] on distracted drivers. In Southern California it is said that blowing one’s car horn may cause ‘road rage,’ but I do it quite often and so far I have not been shot at.
This is a common occurrence on Sunday. On Sunday it is ever worse. On Sunday there are more old people and families on the motorways. Plus, after attending Church, Sunday drivers are often imbued by a sleepy, absent-minded, euphoric feeling, which is then reflected in their sluggish manoeuvres behind the wheel.
It seems a peculiarly American disease, although, to be fair, I have observed it in other Third World countries in Africa and South America. As we have seen, Americans apparently think they are immune to civilised standards of behaviour. The rules apply to others, not them. They are above the rules. In fact there *are* no rules. Whether this comes from entitlement, wealth, excessive individualism, selfishness, ‘special snowflake-ness’, or widespread Jewishness, I’m not sure. Probably a mixture of all these factors.
What a country.
I’ve been on the other side, too, Average Man. Notably I was yelled at in a line at a ttain station. I was paying attention, too, but I understood the frustration because every second counts when you need to catch a train. It doesn’t hurt to have a little consideration for the person who might not be aware of the rules or might see something you do.
Most of the times that I have been informed of miscues in etiquite it has been in a polite.
There is a cumulative effect to holdups in line. When the other people do not do their thing smoothly, those around them are more likely to not do their thing smoothly, and on down the line.
Why do the parties noticing someone slowing things down slow down themselves? If no one did that, there would be no cumulative effect. The reasons are complex but the original post itself is evidence of the fact. There is a dynamic where taking up other people’s time is power, so someone else does it to you, well you are going to do it too.
In traffic, if a car is going too slow, it slows down all the cars in the lane that much, but eventually, and inevitably on a large enough scale, there is a collision and things are really slowed up. There are also cumulations that arise from inexact and over-reactions in speed and braking, that have an increasing radius of effect, even if there is no collision. A person slows down by x amount, and in order not to hit them, the next person who is not a robot slows down by x + y, and so on.