Mind the gap

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all well?  Had a nice weekend?  In good health?

It’s nice when people ask after your well-being, isn’t it?  Okay, so maybe we can’t have in-depth conversations with everyone we come into contact with about their ailments and gripes, but isn’t it nice when people show you a little bit of courtesy?  Are polite?  Talk to you like a human being?

I’ve come to accept that, in London especially, a lot of (but not all) people are often too busy getting on with their own lives in their own worlds to bother smiling on the tube, say excuse me when they push past you with their trolley case (and trip you over with it in the process) or to apologise if they step on the back of your heel as they rush to the office.  But when it comes to one-to-one interactions, I am getting quite tired of people not showing a little courtesy.  When I speak to a member of the public when I’m at work, I don’t except them to shout and swear before they hang up on me, even when I am saying no to their (often unrealistic, sometimes ridiculous) requests.  And when I complain in a pub about the service that I receive, I expect the management to respond to that complaint, not to complain about my complaint (true story!).

And another thing – when did it become okay to email your colleagues without starting with the once-customary “Dear,” or even a “Hi” or “Hello?”  I’m sorry but I don’t get it.  And when you say you’re going to get back to someone by the end of the day about an interview they have just sat through, surely a phone call isn’t too much to ask – especially when an email is met with an “out of office” message?

How you doing, Mr Frog?

Okay, so I don’t get the worst of it.  At the Green Gym on Friday (which I have an article about in the latest edition of the Waltham Forest Echo J) I chatted to a chap about the pitfalls of working in a supermarket – something I have done before and he is about to start doing.  My experience is that, just because you’re in an unskilled job, people think it’s okay to talk to you like you’re an idiot.  I for one make an effort to say hello to the guys in my local Co-Op and ask them how they are - at the end of the day, if they weren’t here, where you I get my midnight pint of milk from?  We all contribute to society (yes, even people who don’t work Mr Cameron), and all deserve to be treated with a bit of respect.

So this week, a plea; can we all start being a bit nicer to each other?  I ain’t a religious person, but I’m a big fan of that “do unto others what you would have done unto you” stuff.  Some people call it Karma.  But whatever it is, can we have a bit more of it please?

I did say please.

Thank you J