Humor

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Common Courtesy
(Do these words still belong next to each other?)
by Dan Blankenship




“Excuse me,” I said to the cashier, “I need to pay for my gas.” Expecting the young lady to put the phone down and take my money (something I thought cashiers were paid to do), I was shocked when she held up her hand as a signal for me to continue standing still, and I guess, keep my mouth shut.

Giving the employee “the benefit of the doubt”, I held back from saying what I wanted to say. After all, maybe she was on the phone with her manager, asking an important question or reporting some pertinent information. No, definitely not that. “Yeah, I like told him I like wasn’t going to go out with him again if he like was going to like act that way and stuff,” I overheard her saying.

Now my first thought was that I had heard about stuff like this happening, but I had been lucky enough to never actually have it happen to me. My luck had run out. I was standing across the counter from a person who had declared war on common courtesy! I mean, failing to use a turn signal or driving into a parking spot before someone else, that’s understandable (we all know it’s a jungle on the roadways and parking lots), but this is a place where money changes hands – my money. And if I’m going to hand someone else my money (yeah, I know, they don’t get to keep all of it), I expect a little respect, a little civility, not “the hand”. Man, I hate “the hand”. I used to get that all the time when I asked my mother a question while she was watching Dallas. I’ll have to ask Mom if she would have been more pleasant if I was handing her a twenty while J.R. was getting shot.

Continuing on with my saga, I informed the young lady on the other side of the torpedo lighters and teeth-whitening gum, that I would really like to leave the store sometime in the near future, if that was okay with her.

When she told her friend on the phone, “Hold on, a customer like just came in,” I so wanted to reply, “Yes, like a customer did come in, about like five minutes ago!” But I didn’t do it. Not sure why. Maybe I was afraid she’d throw the phone at me, or worse yet, grab one of those torpedo lighters and scorch off my eyebrows.

I’m not sure how long common courtesy has been out of style, but I pray we can find a ways to bring the fad back from the brink of extinction. Let’s try this. Make a few copies of this column. Take a black marker and ink off my name (I don’t need people throwing phones at me or chasing me around with torpedo lighters!), and the next time a salesperson is derelict in his or her duties, hand them a copy of this editorial. Better yet, hand it to the manager, unless of course he is also too busy on the phone to be disturbed.

But, my fellow defenders of common courtesy, remember to also praise people who manage to smile and in a timely manner take your money from you. They need all the encouragement they can get. We don’t want the good ones to leave!

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