What Happened to Being Nice?

Rush...rush...hurry...hurry. Get up, get ready, race to your car, and dive to work. Forgetting to check your surroundings you cut off a fellow driver in your attempt to make it to work on time. You cause the person to spin across to another lane taking out another fellow driver and cause an accident. You keep going completely unaware of what you caused. You at least make it to work on time.

This scenario may be a bit extreme, but in today's fast paced society and total lack of consideration for others, this scenario maybe more common then you might think. More and more people are succumbing to the time constraints and forgetting that we all live in this world together and must coexist. With this change, rudeness is at an all time high, and people are soon forgetting what it was to say please and thank you and hold the door for the person behind you.

The common manners that were instilled upon us at the very age we learned to talk has somewhat managed to decline over the generations. While some people are able to be polite and say please and thank you without sounding like they will attack you for not doing as they see fit, there is a growing number of us that have thrown all existence of this once common knowledge straight out the window. Why is it that people have grown and evolved into this "I am the ruler of my universe and everyone else doesn't exist" attitude? What happened to treating everyone with respect and offering assistance to those in need?

Perhaps the biggest form of this decline can be seen in retail businesses. The demand is high and our patience is vastly running out. It is a get in get out movement that we no longer can stop and smell the roses. However, with this fast paced society, our own attitudes are changing and the negative feedback that we are putting into the world is far from acceptable. This decline is being passed on to the children that one day will be passing it to theirs. If this rude attitude and total lack of manners continues, what will become of the future? Are we willing to give up and become one angry and impatient society to save a few precious minutes of our lives?

Everywhere I look in today's society there are rude and just plain mean people everwhere. You go for a cup of coffee and the guy infront of you is yelling and literally threatening the staff if there is a mistake in their order or they are simply taking too long. Elsewhere at the local clothing store an associate is being screamed at for refusing a return on an item that has clearly been drug all over town and worn for a week before the customer decided they want their money back. To look back in time rules and policies were far fewer than today simply due to the fact that people and times change. But with these trends of increased crime and inexcusable behaviors on our part what are we to do? We are angry because everything isn't fast enough. We scream when something goes wrong at the checkout counter and we have to waste five minutes waiting for someone to fix it. We cut people off when we change lanes because we don't even acknowledge that someone might be on the road besides ourselves. Yell, yell, yell. There is no stop to the constant rude behavior.

It is actually a shock to see someone being really nice and helpful. It is a sad day when you notice someone being nice and are proud of it when it should be an ongoing occurance. Granted it is just as obvious when someone is being rude, but for some reason this tends to blur into an everday happening when the nice and helpful someone is a shock to see.

Is it too late to go back? Possibly. It seems that not many are aware of this problem or even consider it a problem. But the truth is it is getting worse. The decline is inevitable and our future is a sure sign that there isn't enough of us polite and considerate folks to keep the world from decaying in a pit of anger and rudeness. Are you willing to acknowledge that you need to be more polite? Or does it even matter in your world? The fact remains, unless you are willing to change and be more aware of those around you, the matter will only get worse, and we will only have ourselves to blame.