Itâs not a south v. west thing, itâs a city thing. Thatâs why New Yorkers are the purest version of this. And itâs why I get both sides.
I grew up in a small town in Northern California, and it was proud of all the small town things â âyou can leave your door unlockedâ and all that. I got a job for a while as a bank teller, and this coworker of mine had moved there from New York.
I liked him (I tend to get along with folks) but a lot of people thought he was rude. âshortâ âimpatientâ even âbruskâ were some descriptions of him, not just from our coworkers, but from the bank customers too. They complained because he always rushed them, never wanted to make small talk, etc.
One day I was working next to him, and I heard him verbally pushing yet another customer along, just racing him through the transaction against his will, and I thought, Iâm gonna say something to him about it.
As soon as the customer left though, before I could say anything, my coworker goes âdamn I hate people like that, get to the front of the line and want to tell me their whole life story. So RUDE!â
So I say something like, how is he the one that was rude to you?
And goes, like he canât believe how stupid Iâm being, â not to me, to all those people in line behind him that want to finish up here and get on with the rest of their day! Youâre at the bank, you know why youâre here, you step up, you do a polite greeting and get the fuck down to business. Everybody has shit to do, and they canât do it until you shut up about your life story that zero people drove down here to listen to. Itâs so selfish! I canât stand people like thatâ
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Since then, Iâve lived in San Francisco, and L.A., and Montgomery Alabama, and Germany and Portland and Oakland and a bunch of little ass towns like Suisun Ca, and Kenwood and all kinds of places, Santa Cruz and Rohnert Park. And Iâve thought about the thing that guy started me noticing.
Itâs true. The closer in to a city (and the larger the city) the more the concept of polite changes from âhow you are effecting the person you are communicating withâ to âhow you are effecting the people packed in around youâ
In Oakland there are like, zero grocery stores (Oakland is literally documented as a âfood desertâ) and so the best grocery store in Berkeley is also a favorite grocery store of Oakland residents and it is⌠full.
Youâll spend a full 30 minutes in the snake of cars circling around in the parking lot waiting for somebody to finish shopping and leave so a parking spot opens up. Once inside, itâs more of the same. Shopping carts are cart-front to ass cheek. You literally canât reach onto a shelf for a box of cereal without waiting for somebody to give you a break in traffic. Sometimes you get stuck standing in a single spot for several minutes, boxed in on all sides. Iâve only been twice, and I swear to all holy gods that if I saw two people trying to catch up on chit chat while we all tried to maneuver around them, I would been reaching for my murdering stick. Itâs called skype motherfuckers, go the fuck home and talk to each other, jfc, the rest of us are trying to make a deadline for some other shit we gotta get done today.
Now, going back home, to small town Nor Cal, yeah, I donât want to be rude, Iâm gonna stop and say hi, Iâm gonna ask about your family, Iâm gonna rack my brain and remember that you had a sick cat or a trip you were trying to take or an interest in boats, and Iâm gonna ask about that shit, fuck yeah tell me about how the tomatoes are coming in this year, I hear the birds are worse than ever.
Anyway, city folk ainât rude, they just polite different; suitable for city life.