It’s All About Respect

As young children, we are usually taught to respect others. I say “usually” because not everybody gets it. Or maybe they just don’t care at all.

Consider this scenario from earlier this week:

I was out at the local Walmart (not my favorite place, by the way). I was in line at the self-service register when these 2 young guys in their early 20’s decided to step ahead of me and stand behind a customer just finishing their transaction and start using that register immediately.

Of course, they cut in line and didn’t care. So when I got my chance to use a register, I passed them and commented to them that I didn’t appreciate their rude behavior and they should have waited their appropriate turn. Their response was virtual silence except for a couple of grunts. It is sad that these 2 idiots showed no respect to me whatsoever and didn’t follow the rules. What’s worse about this was that the employee who was watching these registers never said a word to these guys and just ignored them. She certainly wasn’t doing her job as far as I was concerned.

After I finished my transaction and was walking out to my car, an elderly guy was backing out of a handicapped space without even realizing that I was walking behind his car. Yes, he almost ran me over, but thankfully I was able to get out of the way before I got hit.

Both of these incidents within minutes of each other made me wonder: Am I invisible to everyone or do people just don’t have any respect for me? It could be both but I think the latter is more of the truth.

Granted, given that this all happened at Walmart, the home of the welfare recipient, it was not surprising that people were out and out stupid. I dare anybody to get help in the store and get somebody who actually knows what they are talking about. It will never happen. Walmart is stupid and that is the customer is stupid.

Now consider when I go to anyplace and if I am walking behind someone, how many times I end up with a door in my face. Simply put, people don’t look to see if anybody is behind them to hold the door open for. Maybe they are too busy on their little phone or texting somebody or just not paying attention at all. So, where did all the respect go or was I just not seeing the reality until recently?

I feel that I was more blinded by reality when I was employed because I always felt that everybody should be respected and they respected you. It was also that if you treated a customer badly, chances were that the customer would make a complaint against you. Been there, done that way too many times while employed at Staples, but not hardly at all during my years at Woolworth. The reason is probably that the clientele at Woolworth was similar to that of Walmart, the blind-eyed uncaring customer.

So where does the respect disappear to? Is it a cultural thing or is it dependent on where a person is and who they are around? Sadly I have seen people who are really friendly when I worked with them, but when they are no longer employed they become unfriendly thus disrespectful. While I have tried to stay respectful to people, I can’t help but get angry when people are disrespectful to me. Do I see any change of this respectfulness in the near future? I believe not at all by a long shot as people will still disrespect everyone no matter what. This probably explains why Walmart has never hired me because I still respect people.