This morning within 10 minutes I saw two examples of blatant rudeness on the part of NYers. Just last week I was extoling the virtues of our city and it’s people – we’re really nice. Really! Well this morning was enough to make me change my mind.
Example 1: I’m on the city bus heading to my office. We’ve had torrential rains here this morning, and some of the older buses leak, and this one in particular had a leak over one of the seats. Repeatedly the woman next to me considerately told potential sitters that the seat was wet. I admired her diligence – she told everyone who attempted to sit down. One gentleman, mid-20s, was also told by this woman that the seat was wet. He thanked her and stood in front of the seat, reading his paper. When the woman got off at the next stop, he sat in her seat next to the wet one. He wasn’t there more than 15 seconds reading his paper before a woman came and started to sit in the wet seat. She was about halfway down when I realized this bastard wasn’t going to say a single word to her about the wet seat. So I quickly reached out (deliberately in between this guy’s face and his paper) and before she could plop down all the way into the seat I touched her arm and warned her about the water. She thanked me profusely and moved to the back of the bus. Meanwhile, this ponce keeps reading his paper as though nothing happened. What a jerk.
Example 2: I’m in my building, showing my ID to get to the elevator bank to go upstairs. The woman just ahead of me races onto an open elevator not three feet away from where the ID check is. I can hear her repeatedly jamming her finger on the button to make the doors close. I get through the ID check just as the doors start closing on her elevator. I make eye contact with her and she makes a half-assed gesture like “Sorry I can’t get the door for you.” Yeah sure. So before the doors are closed all the way, I quickly reach out and hit the elevator button on the wall and voila – the elevator doors re-open. I get on, she’s pissed, and I proceed to hold the elevator doors until it’s full.
At this point you are saying, “Well, Jaynee, you are the rude one!” That’s not true. I’m the vindictive one. There’s a difference.
It’s not just NYers that are rude. It’s a universal “I don’t care about anyone but me” attitude. What drive me nuts are the jerks who honk at me b/c I’m kind enough to let another driver through a stop sign at a difficult intersection. If they honk, I let more than a couple of cars through rather than the customary one.
Good for you on the elevator thing! I would have done the same thing…
I don’t care if you’re rude or not, that’s my style. Good for you. Sometimes I try to hold the elevator door for people, sometimes I don’t. Depends if I’m in the mood, if I’m in a rush, if I know there are tens of people waiting to get on, if the guy looks like he smells, if he’s the FedEx guy with a huge hand cart of packages, etc. There are a lot of variables that go into not pressing the “open door” button for someone. Of course, I’d press it for you.
Rude? Vindictive? Honey, you’ve been living in Jersey too long.
Rude would have been you entering the elevator and calling the woman a beyotch, right to her face.
Vindictive would have been looking at the floor she pressed and then hit every subsequent button after leaving the elevator.
What you should have done was hit every single button below her floor so it made all the stops. Then tell her that you didn’t realize she was in a rush. And then for her to fvck herself.