What Grinds My Gears

I’m sitting at my school’s cafeteria minding my own business while I read the newspaper. It’s seven o’clock Monday morning and I am wondering why I have to be eating breakfast so early instead of being able to sleep in. I’m also in a bad mood because they decided not to serve any cereal at breakfast and god knows I love my cereal in the morning. Instead I have to settle for an American breakfast: sausage and bacon with some eggs as well. After I am done with my breakfast I check the time to see if I have to go to class yet. Seven forty-five, still fifteen minutes before I really have to go. So I grab the New-York Times and decide to catch up on the daily news. However, when I come back from getting the newspaper the group of five students who sat next to me decided that they did not have to pick up their trays with everything on them. I get a little annoyed that they could care less about something as simple as common courtesy. I decide to watch how many students actually pick up everything after they finish their breakfast. I am flabbergasted to see that roughly every one out of five students leave everything. This is when I really get angry. People that have no patience or common courtesy really grind my gears. People always seem to be in a rush and in concordance fail to have even the slightest trace of patience. The most common example of this that I experience is when I drive. In Miami people always seem to be in a rush. There is never enough time to get everything done and get from point “A” to point “B” as well. Therefore drivers feel it is necessary to honk at the slightest trace of calm, no one is allowed to take his or her time. WHY! Why are people not allowed to drive at their own pace? People should not be forced to drive above speed limit, hit the gas immediately after the light turns green again, and even hit the gas so you can cross the light in yellow and they drive basically bumper to bumper so they can shave off a couple of seconds from their travel-time. If people really have that little time to do their daily chores then they should try to wake up earlier and maybe that way they would not in such a hurry all the time. From the time that I was able to recognize a patient person from an inpatient person I can tell you that the patient one is almost always happier than the one that has no patience. In addition to that, the surrounding atmosphere around a patient person is much more joyous than one who is always quick to answer and judge. An inpatient person never seems to care about anyone but himself. Although this might not always be the case it is usually the one portrayed. This will give off a negative feeling between them and no one will benefit from it. When people neglect common courtesy and decide it is not their duty to fulfill, it really drives me insane. Why does anyone think that they are good enough to just leave their tray behind in a cafeteria and have someone pick it up for them? Too many times did I see teachers carrying around a stack of cups that seemed on the verge of to topple over with the addition of just one or two more. People should show the decency to pick up anything they use and put it back when they are done. Unless they are willing to pay people to walk around and pickup after them I see no solution to their laziness. I mean, honestly, enough is enough. Maybe you could get by when you were young because people gave you the benefit of the doubt that you “forgot”. Not anymore. It really kills me that people lack enough common courtesy to clean up after themselves. Not only are you making someone else’s job harder, but I can speak for society and say that I much rather see a clean table then one with three trays containing seven plates that still have food left over. It is also not hard to clean up after you are done. I know that the person is able to carry everything in one trip because he did the same trip to the table with all the plates that had food on them. Another form where people show no sense of courtesy is when someone goes out of their way to help a person, and that person shows no signs of appreciation and goes on as if they expect to be treated special. No one should expect to be treated differently. They should be just as appreciative when someone helps them. If someone is willing to take care of a friend’s son/daughter while they go away on a trip, they should do something to make sure their appreciation is felt. If they do not I highly doubt that the kind person who helped will feel as if they were taken advantage of and will never offer their services again. If everyone just did that little something extra to be courteous, society would benefit in overwhelming proportions. My personal daily goal is to do some small gesture that will make one new person smile everyday. This one small detail seems so insignificant on a large scale but I have to think that the small gesture I did will make that one person’s day that much better. Now if every single person did one small act of kindness, it would be monumental. Something as easy as saying, “Thank you. Have a nice day” can easily turns anyone’s bad day into a good one. Instead people are always grouchy and short, they always seem to care less about other people. If you cannot picture the difference it would make, I will put it in a more “every day” example. Suppose one person gave a charity a dollar bill daily. Although it is a minute difference, it is better than nothing. But now instead of one person imagine if everyone in your entire community donated one dollar to a cause. Immediately you can tell the difference. Now here I used money to portray my example. My suggestion is not for people to give a physical good to make life better, just being amiable and chivalrous will change be noticed. So I say people’s lack of common courtesy bothers me, but what exactly is common courtesy? When I think of common courtesy I think of a gesture of good will without the expectation of something in return to whomever the act of good will was directed towards. Not only is common courtesy no longer seen in our everyday lives, but the way people act today would not even qualify as “proper etiquette” in the past. The proper etiquette of the past can now be considered to be common courtesy, which is a downgrade in human society. To show what I mean I will give the common example of movie theaters. People are supposed to turn off all cell phones, be quiet, and try to sustain their children’s behavior to a respectable level. However this is not the case. People never silence their cell phones even though the previews have an entire skit that remind people to please turn them off. Infants are brought along to movies and rarely do they behave in a manner appropriate to the setting around them. This same exact behavior can be seen in churches. A church is supposed to be the house of god and a place of worship, but instead I regularly hear cell phones and babies disrupting the priest. My final view can be related to smoking. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing wrong with people smoking. However, I do have a problem when people choose to smoke in a tight, closed environment. It is well documented that smoking is bad for one’s health and for those who inhale the smoke around them. Therefore why do smokers have to smoke when other people are so close that they can easily be discomforted? Instead, smoke in an environment where everyone around you joins in or where there is enough space that it will not affect the people around him or her. Why has this happened? Why is common courtesy no longer a common part of our society? Since no one has the exact answer I can only speculate. In my opinion, society has just become cold hearted. People are so focused on material goods to suffice their needs that people have become a secondary need to many people. Why this change occurred is up for grabs. When people decided that having other people in their lives was no longer necessary to be happy is a mystery. However, that is what I believe has happened to our society. Since technology has made it so easy to live alone and never require anyone else’s help, many people have deemed other people as a waste of time and unnecessary to be kind too. It just involves too much effort for them. That is another point that may be the cause of the loss of courtesy. Our lives have become so much easier as technology advances that people no longer think the effort is worth it, so they go along being the cold-hearted people that they are. When it comes down to it, people just don’t care enough anymore. Etiquette is the proper behavior in certain situations. The only problem is that etiquette is so infrequently practiced now that courtesy is deemed to be voluntary act that only exists when people feel like using it. This has annihilated the concept of etiquette and transformed it into courtesy. Therefore why should it be called common courtesy? I am absolutely sure it is no longer “common” for people to be courteous the majority of the time. That is why I say that etiquette has transformed into courtesy and not common courtesy. For courtesy to become common once again the solution is simple; etiquette must once again be relearned. Etiquette cannot be associated as an altruistic belief, it is merely how people should conduct themselves for proper representation to be respectful to oneself and more importantly others. This problem will continue to occur until people also realize that they are not alone in their surroundings.