The world is worried about its safety. The environment. Whether North Korea will attack. Whether transgendereds should be in the military. That and a whole host of issues. All of them need to be concerned about and debated.
I am not interested in any of them today.
I am concerned about something that is among the root problems that we face in society today.
Have you gone to a store recently? A bank? A coffee shop? Have you listened?
At the bank the big thing is to know the customer. I have been using the same bank like forever and there are a few old timers that know when I am going to come in and what kind of mood I will be in.
That’s fine. Being quizzed by the “20 something” about my likes and dislikes is a bit irritating.
The woman at the coffee shop knows when I come in. What I want in my tea or coffee. She has been there for a long time. When she was a kid I remember her. She is no kid now. Neither are any of her customers it seems.
But have you noticed something else?
Have you noticed that no one makes eye contact. No one says “your welcome” “Thank you is a thing of the past. The clerks are getting younger and they certainly have their own way of doing things. And, I am not sure it is all that great.
How many times has a guy gone for coffee and been met with, “here you go bud” or the equally irritating “here are you bud (or buddy).
If you don’t know my name (insert the phrase “do you know who I am,” here) that is fine. “Bud or Buddy or Dude” isn’t it. It is irritating and crude and rude and a variety of other things.
All you teachers out there teaching to the test, you should be teaching your students how to hold a conversation because I bet they can’t.
So here is the basic issue.
If we can’t handle basic communication between two people in the easy stuff, how on earth are we going to handle the stuff that really matters?
We should get this right.
(Photo with thanks to and by Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)