I can agree that most people have good intentions, but only when they are conscious of them. Kind of like the people that stop to let you cross the street when you're waiting for them to just drive by, so you can cross the street. I know to some that may not have made any sense, but if I'm standing on the sidewalk I'm waiting for the street to clear. It's when I'm already crossing the street that I'm more concerned about drivers letting me cross.

Anyway, I'm pretty fed up with the unconcious manner in which people seem to function when in public anymore. Just today, a janitor in a department store who was pushing a dust mop stepped right in front of me as I pushed my cart through an aisle. No excuse me's or pardon me ma'am's, and he went as slow as molasses in January. I know he saw me, as he made eye contact, and the desire to ram his heels with my cart was overwhelming, but I didn't.

At check out, I used one of those self-checkout areas. The machine that took bills didn't accept those pretty new $20's, so I had to go ask the cashier who oversaw the area for an old $20. She was on the phone, chatting up a friend within the store....about make-up. I waited, and waited. Then I waited some more. Finally she gets off the phone. I thought, ok, here's when she says, "Can I help you?" But she didn't. She started pressing random keys, sighed, looked around. I finally said, "Could I get some help please?" To which she replied, "Tsss...of course." No smile, no sorry I was spacing off, no I hate my job and don't care about anoyone. She gave me an old $20 for my new one and I went on my merry way.

People who don't look when pushing a cart and getting in your way. People who can't comprehend that when they leave their cart parked cross-ways in an aisle that it blocks others who want to pass. People stand right in front of a door so others can't get through. People who stand in front of the entire meat counter, with their cart, while on the cell phone. People who talk as if at a loud concert so that everyone in a 100 foot radius knows exactly what they are talking about. Oh, and peopl who use a bus seat for their purse when there aren't any other bus seats for people to sit down.

I encountered them all today. I'm sure they all have good intentions at some point in their lives, but that reminds me of a saying...I can't quite remember how it goes....

I think it has a lot to do with the perceived urban 'no eye contact' etiquette. When you ask someone to let you by you are forcing them to acknowledge your existence, which has somehow become offensive in public. I have no idea why. I come from a part of the country where, thankfully, people still go to the trouble to nod at each other or throw up their hand at passing cars whether they know them or not. I dunno how this whole prison-chic idea of "Don't make eye contact" slithered into the mainstream, but I hate it.

I like your style JeremyG I try to combat such behavior by saying things to my 3yr old like "Sweetie, see that? That is called being rude. That's not nice. Let's not be rude." People either will look a little emabarrassed when I do that or give me the finger or something

I grew up in a small town so I was raised on waving to passersby. I have always thought, and tell my children that new people are potential friends. Of course we teach them to be careful of strangers. There is a good series of videos called "Tricky People" but that's another subject.

If you just smile and say hi, people tend to do the same in general. There are always the ones that avoid eye contact but I guess I just feel sorry for them. Either that or I laugh at them for being such sour pusses. Fight snarls with smiles!

Yeah. Blacklisting is a bit too harsh, but they still shouldn't be working with customers until they're able to be polite. I don't care about their circumstances simply because I'm sure there's somebody else that wants their job that wouldn't be such a jerk.
Of course, if somebody simply just had a bad day, that's more forgivable then somebody that is chatting with their friends when they should be working.

I worked retail at Staples this past summer and its amazing how many of my co-workers I couldn't stand, yet its also amazing how good most of us were. I mean YOU try working back to school shopping, 12hr days for two to three weeks. Its hard to stay polite to every idiot that wanders up to you asking "Do you have any book socks?" when we had a sign on the door saying "NO BOOK SOCKS" in letters about 3ft tall.

I know I got more compliments than most people do on my manors and politeness while working there, and I was proud of what I did. Maybe I was raised differently but after working there, I never want to work retail again. I can be nice to people but most customers didn't even deserve. All they deserved was a strong kick in the ass. Customers might always be right, but that doesn't mean they have a right to be assholes, always.

Everyone has some good in them. Modern "society" has gotten so used to the violence that it often times doesn't phase them. Living life in the fast lane has caused a sort of horse race quality to life. Most people have "blinders", they see what is going on around them because they're too worried about themselves and their family. General awareness has fallen so severely it amazes me that people don't walk into walls and doors more often just for not seeing them.

How about people who park their cars right in front of a store (usually a Walgreen's around here) so that pedestrians have to go around them. I suppose it is because they are so much better than everyone else. At first I thought maybe it was an old or handicapped person, but it usually turne out to be a yuppie with an SUV, an Andrew Dice Clay sort-of-a-guy, or an Andrew Dice Clay guy waiting for his bimbo-esque girlfriend....none of which seem to have a reason for blocking the door.

As for employees, I think that people behind the counter get more abuse coming their way from the customers than visa-versa. Perhaps enough of this turns some of them rude. It's hard to smile all day when you are making poverty wages. However, I have a story about a rude employee who has no excuse. I was in a mega-smiley face store where the employees where blue vests which shall remain nameless, and I had my cart sittting to the side of a ridiculously narrow aisle about to put some cases of storebrand water in there. An employee comes around the corner with a large ladder and I try to move a little out of his way, but there's no where to go. He says (no to my face), "with those glasses you'd think you could see to get out of the way!" Now there was a little old lady near the corner he was coming around so he might have been talking to her, I couldn't tell because he didn't have the nerve to look at either one of us. It didn't even occur to me that he was talking to me until later or else I would have said something to him. It was too hard to beliee to register in my mind. I certainly wouldn't say this to a customer, or to anyone!