Dear Miss Wallflower
You know what’s rude? I mean, what really bugs people?
It’s when they’re like talking on the cell phone and they’ve just said something like “What’s that? I can’t hear you.” and then you wait a second and then scream in their other ear just as the person they’re talking to is starting to repeat themselves. Seriously.
I went around doing this to people all day yesterday and nobody liked it. And yet no book of ettiq… etiqe… manners I’ve ever found mentions one word about it! Not even the ones that were written after cell phones were made. That seems like a major oversight, you know?
So I started thinking that maybe I should write a book of manners but then I started thinking that sounds like a lot of work and maybe I should do an advice column instead. You know like where people write in when they have questions about manners and stuff and I answer them in a polite and bossy sort of way? Because if I write a book I have to try to think up all the questions people might have about manners and then answer them all at once but with the column my job is half done. Also like if somebody asks a question about is it rude to scream in somebody’s ear when they’re talking on a cell phone I’d be all kinds of ready for that.
Um except now that I think about it that’s the only question that I’m any kind of ready for so maybe I should hold off on the column thing.
At least until I’ve done a little more research.
~Ariella Rasputin Wallflower
November 28th, 2007 at 11:13 am
I know what you mean about books of manners lacking stuff. I think you would be good at the advice column thing. You could answer questions like “Is it rude to swap plates with somebody at a different table in a restaurant when they aren’t looking if you think what they ordered looks better than what you ordered?” I mean I didn’t know that. They sure got excited over it though. I mean really, was it any reason for the mait … head waiter to make me leave the restaurant? And then he got even madder when I asked for the food I ordered in a doggy bag as he closed the door in my face.
November 28th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
I know exactly what you mean!
My biggest pet peeve is when cars pull out at a corner and stop right in the pedestrian walkway when you’re trying to cross the road. I mean, PEDESTRIANS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY, don’t we? We’re discriminated against just for walking! It makes me want to carry a baseball bat and whack out their headlights and their windshields and their windows and their faces…
Not that I would do something like that, I’m a pacifist. At least, not more than once.
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September 2nd, 2010 at 7:46 pm
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