I am by nature a polite person. Not happy-go-lucky by any means, nor naturally cheerful or optimistic. Years of experience have burnished the patina of cynicism to something hard and matt, like the paint on an old garden shed.
But I am polite. I make way for old ladies. Give up my seat on the bus if a pensioner or pregnant woman or just plain fat lazy sod looks like they need it. I’ll be scrupulously polite to shop assistants because god knows they put up with some arseholes. I may even go so far as be look aghast if anyone treats one of these benighted creatures with rudity or contempt because dammit, they're people and they're just as good as you no matter that there’s a counter (and all that it implies by way of master/servant relationships) between the two of you.
Sometimes, though… Today, for instance. I’d just spent too much time trying to explain to Pete The Greek – my tonsorial artist of choice – that if I was going to sacrifice a good nine month’s worth of hair growth I was going to have it in exactly the style I wanted, I’d even pointed at one of his wall photos that showed the desired length (but most certainly the undesired 1980s boy-band moussed-up style), and, as always, I'd left his salon raring to go home and shave it all off. The man cuts men’s hair for money. What part of ‘longish crop’ doesn’t he understand? I wanted George Clooney, I got Rosemary Clooney.
Next stop, the bank, to pay in some Income. The automated deposit machines were both out of action and someone had performed some manner of unspeakable act on the rapid deposit slot, so it meant queueing for a real human teller.
I’m standing there, end of the queue, when a woman comes in behind me, holding a small child, pushing an empty pushchair. No idea why. Maybe she just liked making more work for herself. She pushes the pushchair a little too far, it hits the back of my ankle, just by the Achilles. No harm done. I look round, automatically reacting to the feeling. The kid smiles, I smile back. His mother looks at me like I’m Gary Glitter on his first day release. Still. No harm done.
Queue moves forward. Woman pushes buggy into my heel again. I turn and give her the ‘That’s twice, let’s not let this happen again’ look, but still politely.
And again. And, surprisingly, again. By now I’m nearly at the head of the queue, estimating which number cashier, and frankly I’m a bit pissed off.
“Would you mind being a little more careful, please? I’d like to be able to walk out of here.”
“What you talk to me like that for? You should move your feet and not complain.”
“You’ve got a child, I don’t want to upset the child, let’s leave it, but please watch what you’re doing.”
‘Fuckin’ tell me what to do.”
“You know what, lady? Fuck you.”
And I paid in my deposit, leaving her muttering voodoo curses even as she manoeuvred the buggy to the adjoining teller.
But you put it behind you.
Sainsbury’s: three checkouts actually manned by a human being, twelve self-services. Three staff to oversee/help. Long queues on the manned tills, so onto a self-scan. As is usual, an item registers wrongly and sets off the little red light to summon an assistant. All three assistants are happily chatting about the weekend, or the X-Factor, or whatever. I look at them, raising my eyebrows and tapping my foot. One come s along.
It happens again. Assistant takes as much time as he likes. Third time, none of them take any notice at all – they’re all chatting away like it was lunchtime.
“Excuse me! Need to, y’know – “
And rather than leap over to my side and double check my Fairtrade bananas, the guy keeps talking.
“Hey! Can you come over and – “
Guy looks at me, so he’s obviously aware the scanner’s misread again… and he turns away and keeps talking.
That’s how come he had to clean up the bag of unpaid-for shopping that I upended, along with the unscanned items in my basket, over his nice, clean, but sadly unattended self-scanning area.
See? Be polite. Do your job. Don’t treat people like arseholes. ‘Cause if you do, they’ll act like one.
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