Thursday, January 3, 2019

There is Nothing Common About Courtesy

There has been many a time where I find myself simply shaking my head at some of the things that people do. It is during these moments that I think to myself "what ever happened to common courtesy?" More often than not, however, I remember that there is nothing common about courtesy. In this post, I would like to tell you about two experiences that I had recently; one was today, the other was just a few weeks ago.

I am going to start by telling you about the one that happened a few weeks ago. Not too long ago, I decided to order some prints from the Walmart Photo Center website. The online transaction went smoothly, and at the end I was informed that I would receive an email when my order was ready for pick-up. When I received the email, I went to Walmart, approached the service counter in the photo center, and kindly asked the man working there if he would collect my order so that I could be on my way. As he is looking through a drawer of photos that were ready to be picked up, a woman who appeared to be in her mid 20's approached the counter, interrupted my order pick-up transaction, and asked the man working there if her photo was ready yet. I was somewhat annoyed by the fact that she interrupted (perhaps she thought her time was more valuable than mine), but I was left dumbfounded when the man stopped helping me without a moment of hesitation. By the time he was done helping the woman who interrupted, about five minutes had passed. I am a fairly easy-going person so I did not react negatively or cause a scene, however, I was unimpressed to say the least. When the sales associate came back to me he did apologize, although I'm not certain that he saw the error of his ways in that moment, but again, given that I am fairly easy-going, I was satisfied with his apology. He began searching for my order again, only to come to the realization that it had been lost. He informed me and asked if I wouldn't mind waiting a few minutes for him to reprint it. I obliged. So now, not only did I have to wait for him to stop helping me in order to help someone else, I also had to for a new set of pictures to be printed. What should have been a quick in and out had me standing at the photo center for about 20 minutes. It is then that I remembered that there is nothing common about courtesy.

The next little story that I have happened just today. I work in an office and usually find myself going down to the lunchroom on the first floor of the building to heat-up and eat my lunch. Today I did just that. There are only two microwaves in the lunchroom; one was being used by me, the other by someone else. About halfway into the time that my food was in the microwave, a woman walked in, opened up my microwave (while it was still running), and then just closed it and stood there annoyed that she had to wait. I'm sure that you have likely noticed that I didn't mention anything about her turning the microwave back on after she had opened it and saw my food in it. That's because she didn't. Nope, instead she just stood there for about a minute before asking me if i was done using it. At that point, I walked over to the microwave, looked at her, turned it back on, and then went back and sat down. When it beeped, I went back and took it out. At that point it didn't really matter anymore though because the other microwave was free, but it really made me shake my head in disbelief. All I can say is that if you happen to open up a microwave that still has food in it PLEASE check to see if there is time remaining on it. If there is, go ahead and turn it back on.... its just common courtesy!

That's all for today!