I'm so done with being polite. There's holding your tongue to avoid conflict, and then there's being walked all over. And I'm so done with it.
When someone is infringing on our personal space, why don't we do something about it?
A person in a restaurant is speaking loudly on their cell phone. Do we go over and ask them to please take their conversation outside? No.....we roll our eyes and complain with our companion.
A person is smoking within our breathing area. Do we ask them to please go smoke their cigarette elsewhere? No.......we wave our arms about and try to give a "hint" that the smoking is bothering us.
A person is loud and obnoxious and annoying at the movie theater. Do we ask them to tone it down? No.......we sit and become aggravated because our movie is being ruined.
I'm one of the worst offenders of this kind of non-confrontational behavior. The scenarios I've described have happened to everyone, and for some reason we cannot get up the chutzpah to do something about it.
We don't want to be rude. We don't to offend. We don't want to make a scene.
It might take me some time - but I want to grow a backbone -- I want to stand up for myself - I want to recapture my personal space and assert my rights.
Anyone have any ideas how?
3 comments:
When you figure it out, let me know...I am also the epitome of passive aggression as opposed to spine!
Just do it once and it gets easier after that. We ran into the cell phone yakker at a restaurant in DE. We had taken our daughter and SIL to a very busy restaurant. We were seated but there were many people waiting and one woman was actually hanging over our booth yapping on her phone. I did like you with the eye roll hoping she'd get the hint. She didn't. I asked her nicely to move. She wouldn't. I then stood up and told her how rude she was and to GO AWAY! She rolled her eyes and me and told me I was rude. My family almost had to restrain me. I'm done with it too.
You know, that "don't infringe on my personal space" thing is from the 70's and it just doesn't seem to have been passed down to the following generations. The question is, who is better off -- those of us with good manners imbedded in our beings by parents and grandparents, or the current generation who generally doesn't have respect for personal space and is more than happy to tell you to F off if they feel like it? I don't think it's in me to be that rude to another person, even when they are being rude to me. But I can't figure out if that's a good or bad thing!
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