The Shouter Limits
Bob Morris included yours truly in his New York Times column about the anti-zen way to encourage good manners. He starts with his experience:
The three children two rows ahead of me on a Florida flight over a recent holiday weekend were going wild, yelling across other passengers, whining and screaming like colicky infants (though they were far from it). Their indulgent, clueless parents were doing very little to control them.I had earplugs. Still, I could hear them clearly. Should I say something?
My instinct was to lay low, but after witnessing the obvious distress of the crew and other passengers for two hours, I became emboldened. "Will you please shut those kids up?" I yelled at the top of my lungs.
There was a moment of silence while the father looked around for the source of the complaint. I stayed seated, anonymous behind him. But then the man next to me (who runs a martial arts school for children in New Jersey, he later said) took up the cause. "And if they won't shut up," he yelled, "get some duct tape for their mouths!"
The other passengers nodded in support. Some were even smiling. Perhaps I had been uncivil, but it was clearly in the name of the greater good. I guess I had given voice to the collective superego, the one that yells out what everybody else is thinking of the ill-mannered ó Emily Post with a bullhorn.
You go, Emily! And here's the part with my part:
"Someone has to be the ethical fascist," said Amy Alkon, a syndicated advice columnist who hands out cards in Los Angeles teasing S.U.V. drivers as road-hogging, gas-guzzling vulgarians." Sally Beatty, a Wall Street Journal reporter who chastised a rude receptionist in a doctor's office the other day, said, "You just see something that needs to be done and you do it."Me? I was mortified for my eruption on that plane, but eventually pleased as well. Because to everyone's relief, those children were quiet for the rest of our flight.
Sometimes you just have to demand good manners in the rudest possible way.
That was what I did today when I encountered a cur on her cell phone in a no-cell phone-zoned Santa Monica cafe. There's actually a "No Cell Phones" sign at this particular place. Cur Woman saw it (and told me so after I pointed the sign out), but saw fit to ignore it. "It's raining out," she whined plaintively, as if Noah and The Ark were about to wash up any moment. I noted that the sign did not say "No Cell Phones -- except when there's a light mist," (which there was) but, simply "No Cell Phones." (Moreover, I'd just gone outside and stood under an awning to talk to my boyfriend on my own cell phone, and I didn't exactly get washed away in the torrential afternoon sprinkle.) Well, the woman stormed over to my table, as fast as her little drumstick-shaped legs could carry her, and demanded, "Who do you think you are?!" -- probably assuming I'd crawl under my table and curl up like a bug.
Well, not only am I naturally rather tall, I was wearing my normal four-inch-heeled slut boots. I got up from the table, stood up straight, towering over her, and announced, "I'm Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess," and added, most conveniently, "And you can find me talking in the Sunday NY Times Styles section about rude people like you!" (Thank you, Emily Post/Bob!)
Our Girl In Cur-hood didn't disintegrate into a small pile of ashes from my withering squint (sadly, I'm all posture and no special powers), but there was more squawking from her about how I should be minding my own business, blah, blah, blah. I told her I'd been hoping to -- until my business was interrupted by her yammering. She squawked on a bit, then wobbled across the room on her little drumstick legs to commune with some other rule-flouter -- loudly detailing how she was disturbed by me while disturbing the peace. Oh, the injustice!
Now, I don't claim to be mature or anything. Perhaps I could have approached her a little less confrontationally. Perhaps. Still, I do get a little pissy about needing to interact with the universe all the time just because the place appears to be populated, largely, by inconsiderate boors. That said, there is something about standing up and looking down on the top of some squat rude person's head when you're berating them that is near-sex-like in the satisfaction it brings!
Will you please come to my local supermarket and yell at a) the checkers, who cannot get someone through the line in less than 20 minutes, and then, when you its finally your turn to pay for the damn quart of milk, say, "Would you like to donate a dollar to..." b) the guy who decides not only to get a money-saving members' card but to cash his paychecks from now on at this cash register, necessitating a 15-minute double-process and c) the portly manager, who I swear was drunk, and prattled on about how this card was not only going to save the guy money, but it would remember all his information, so that if it showed that he didn't buy any meat for a month, he'd get a two-dollars off coupon in the mail for... soy burgers? No, for meat! Only because my daughter was there mouthing, "Calm, mama, calm" did I not start to scream uncontrollably. Now, I realize, I just need you to do my shopping with me.
nancy at February 22, 2004 9:42 AM
I think you should invest in a realistic toy gun, worn in a sholder holster under your Gaultier jacket. You just allow the holster to peek out,ever so slightly. It's move to practice, like a hair toss. You could also buy an official-looking badge in a leather carrier, and whip it out--too fast to be read, you understand--and tell her that you're with LAPD. That's Politeness Dept, ma'am.
KateCoe at February 22, 2004 10:43 AM
okay first of all, I've decided to wear my 4" tall slut boots on a daily basis, though that'll only bring me up to about 5'7"...
and secondly - nancy! have you been to Target lately? I love the place, but they obviously have some sort of incentive to get people to sign up for a new credit card... Some of the checkers are nice about it, but I swear I nearly smacked a couple of them for being so pushy.
pushy salespeople... what level of rude is that?
netochka at February 22, 2004 1:00 PM
Cel -hones almost seem like a throw-back to nicer politer times compared to today with the Nextel users and their "direct-connect" feature. I don't know if this service is available out in your neck of the woods yet. This "advancement" turns your cel phone into a walkie-talkie. Person #1 shouts into their phone, then the phone chirps twice in an unignorable high pitch, followed by a very loud garbled transmission from whomever it is so important they need to converse with. I swear it reminds me of how adults sound on old Charlie Brown shows.
Jeep Crew at February 22, 2004 2:14 PM
I ran into an early adopter of those walkie-talkie phones at Costco one day, and I'm sure that person is still deeply regretting their birth because of it.
Nancy, I'm yours. Just call me Bitchy Doright. I get great satisfaction in being the fascistic manners nanny of the vast hoards of -- I love the term in French -- "Mal-elevÈes"-- the "badly raised."
And to anyone in the ranks of the rude and vastly irritating who's reading here -- "yes, I could 'say it nicely'" -- but why miss out on all the fun!
What I love is when somebody calls me an angry bitch and I just nod placidly. It makes them blow their rude little stacks.
Note to would-be fascists: check first for the firearms bulge.
And while I really don't wish to own a gun -- if I did own one, it would have a finish like the silver-pink iPod mini. Really, though, my gun ambitions end at simply looking like Angie Dickenson brandishing one. (Angie as Sgt. Pepper Anderson for any of you who were born yesterday.)
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2004 4:11 PM
I loved the article, and I am coverted; I think the word that tipped it for me was "smoldering." This is going to be so fun...
nancy at February 22, 2004 6:19 PM
shouldn't there be a separate line for people who come with a handful of coupons, too?
david at February 22, 2004 7:54 PM
"That said, there is something about standing up and looking down on the top of some squat rude person's head when you're berating them that is near-sex-like in the satisfaction it brings!"
Now that you mention it, I've been a very bad boy.
Jim Treacher at February 22, 2004 8:01 PM
Slut!
Amy Alkon at February 22, 2004 10:43 PM
If you don't want to take my advice, well, you can't say I didn't warn you. But here's some handy cards: http://www.glarkware.com/securestore/c181844p16370773.2.html
kateCoe at February 23, 2004 2:44 PM
Amy, you are so funny. One time I was at said cafe, and one of the baristas took the "No Cell Phones" sign up to someone's table.
Tiffany at February 25, 2004 4:24 PM