As Voltaire said, "Common sense is not so common." I'm having a particularly grouchy morning. I've talked to 3 different medical receptionists and nurses today and none of them has allowed me to finish a sentence. The last nurse I talked to told me she'd get right on "it" and get back to me. If she does get back to me, I'm going to ask her what "it" is, because she never found out what I wanted. Back up. The receptionist interrupted my first sentence, and guessed, incorrectly, what I needed and put me onto the nurse. Likewise, the nurse interrupted my first sentence and guessed, again incorrectly, what I needed. Well, we'll see how bad I can make her feel when she calls back.
Meanwhile, while I'm in this mood, grinding away at my mountain of work, a student walks into my office. The door was closed, but not latched. And this blithering idiot barges into my office without knocking. If he'd been one of my students, I'd have chased him down the hallway with a 3-hole punch.
So he stands there with some papers in his hand looking at me like I'm a shiny object. Then announces that he's going to leave his homework on my office mate's desk. "O" and then "K", I say, reaching for my 3-hole punch. How precious are his next words:
"Uh, you got a stapler?" I lied. Of course I have a stapler, but I'm not in the habit of loaning it out to bumblers who have just committed breaking-and-entering.
It sure seems like that which we called "common courtesy" as recently as 20 years ago is all but dead.
The core and founding principle of courtesy is respect for others' personal spaces. Yet look how much we violate this daily. Or minutely. I can't listen to Mozart on my car radio, because the escaped inmate in the next pickup is blasting his anti-music so loudly. I can't walk down the sidewalk without someone (who is apparently allergic to shampoo) accosting me about saving the environment (which a bottle of shampoo would go a long way towards.) I can't have a meal without an utterly insignificant politician calling me to yell about something.
As for my intrusive dirtball this morning: he didn't bother taking his earbuds out while asking for my stapler. The "music" was so loud I could hear it plainly and, while it didn't completely drown out the Chopin Nocturne I was listening to, it did interfere with it sufficiently that I had to start it over. To top it off, when I went outside my office later, the hallway was strewn with the little bits of paper produced by spiral bound notebooks. Yes, the dweeb had stood outside the door and torn these little bits off his homework and simply tossed them on the floor.
What can you do but shake your head and think, "What starts here changes the world," and "We are in so much trouble"?
And surely interrupting someone while they are speaking is equivalent to personal space violations. Both sorts of sin are sins of arrogance. If you barge into my office without knocking and invitation, you saying something about how much more important you are than me. If you talk over the top of my sentence, you are saying something about how much more important you are than me. Such covert messages are apt to put me in a very bad mood.
In sum: Couldn't we all get together and resurrect the time-honored practice of taking turns speaking and knocking before entering?
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Your health related issues could very well be related to your job professing to a delinquent generation, along with your sensitive temperament when dealing with unattractive personalities. You're steadily becoming one of those older gentlemen who tell wartime stories from the bedside while emphasizing, "When I was your age [dot dot dot]". It's troubling to look at a younger generation and think to oneself, "Was I ever like that?" The answer is probably no, as today's culture is vastly different from one 30-40 years ago. I personally blame the World Wide Web, video games, and America's idolization of celebrities who have the IQ of a door knob. But listen, we will all be in your shoes one day, explaining our version of history (the Internet boom, the wars without war, world globalization, America's downfall, and so on) to our grandchildren -- although, some people should refrain from reproducing. Keep doing what you do, though, because we are not all senseless children looking for a stapler. Some of us see the error in our ways and our peers, but they, we, will postpone learning from our mistakes until we look back years from now, old and disgruntled. By that time, a new liberal generation will see us only as delirious republicans.
ReplyDeleteSigned,
An admirer
@Pope, Remember that this is a deliberately "negative" blog. While my job can be stressful, I thoroughly enjoy changing freshmen into sophomores, etc. If nothing else, I'm helping to reduce the number of freshmen in the world, which can be only a good thing. Our generations are not so different, btw. It's true that today's 20-year-olds are much less active, but as far as not grasping the wisdom of the previous generation, they're pretty much the same as we were.
ReplyDeleteFairly unrelated, but I thought you might enjoy this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=1701#comic
When your prof starts playing doom in class...
ReplyDelete"...what can you do but shake your head and think, 'What starts here changes the world,' and 'We are in so much trouble'? "
hahahahaha if it was me, the music would be rachmaninov....
ReplyDelete