Basic common courtesy. It’s been dwindling these recent
years. Less and less people do those simple polite things that once were just
commonplace. Every time I catch the bus I’m surprised by how few people thank
the driver as they get off.
Very few people hold doors open, and it’s become
incredibly rare for someone to apologise for walking into you when you’re out
shopping. Even worse is working in customer service where for every one person
who thanks you as you serve them, you get at least 8 who outright glare at you
for not being able to snap your fingers and have everything magically completed.
Actually, in customer service you can get a lot worse as well, but here we’re
just thinking about basic manners.
Why are they so rare nowadays? What was so
wrong with not acting like a jerk all the time?
La Petit Syrah, a café in Nice, France, are working hard to
rectify this problem with an ingenious new concept. Prices vary according to
manners. That’s right, if you’re rude, you could find yourself paying 7 euros
for a coffee (that’s about £5.80). But step it up to a basic “hi, coffee please”
(but in French, obviously) and you’ll find that your drink only costs you 1.4
euros (that’s about £1.28). The exact same coffee you understand, but a hello
and a please will make the difference between paying Starbucks prices or
vending machine prices for the same exact thing.
Now, whilst I don’t feel like people should NEED an
incentive to be polite, since they clearly do, given how lacking we seem to be
these days, a big discount is probably enough to do it. I think they ought to
roll this out across everywhere in Britain and see if we can’t get people
pretending that they aren’t arseholes. For the two minutes it takes to order a
coffee at least.
Are you surprised I got through this whole article without saying 'manners cost nothing'?
Ari Carrington
