Rude Behavior - Is There an Epidemic?

Nope,

Just Bad Examples from the "0'bosses" and consequent BLOWBACK!

Pettiness

It is the pettiness of people that is most alarming. It is everywhere. Especially in Politics such as the tea party members. Then there is the religious pettiness such as the Westboro Church. If an institution or a faith makes an individual petty then give it up because life is too short.

Yeah

"On cell phones: The lack of cell phone etiquette is one of my personal pet peeves. I am annoyed by loud inane conversations shared with everyone in restaurants, retail and grocery stores, lines at the bank or post office, movie theaters and coffee shops. I don't care if your boyfriend/girlfriend is being a jerk, how drunk you got at last Friday's party or whether or not you were invited to the wine tasting. And please, at least pause your conversation long enough to pay for your meal, or your merchandise! Believe it or not, you are not that adept at multi-tasking. Texting or constantly glancing at your cell phone to see if you have a message while I am talking with you is unbelievably rude."

Just said it all. It gets on my nerves to share someone's life, whose meaning has nothing to do with me, and I couldn't care less. People think it ok to act like a celebrity in public places by discussing particular affairs in large gatherings of people. What they don't know or don't want to know is that they are disrupting other people's own right to thinking with their own heads, by intruding senseless topics for everyone to listen to. And, of course, there are people who never learned how to talk, they just SHOUT on their cell phones and they think it is perfectly all right. You should matter your own business and not pay attention to the person's scandalous behaviour on the phone. But it is not that easy. In fact, I've discovered it is one of the hardest things when it happens and annoys you on a daily basis.

After cell phones were introduced to general use, life was never to be the same in the public places. Public places have lost all their sense of beauty and comfort, once anywhere you seat to watch the hustle and bustle and (oops, I forgot it was banned) quietly smoke your cigarette while you amuse yourself with that unstoppable human traffic just before you, and reflect philosophically on life, you are almost always forced to share an egregious intimacy with totally strangers and their putrid lives, because there are 9 chances in 10 that someone next to you will start the talk on the mobile. I have heard boyfriends and girlfriends breaking up, sobbing, I have heard people talking about their love for one another for more than 40 minutes non-stop, I have heard people talking behind other people's back for one hour on end, people swearing, people discussing fishy/ultimately unpleasant subjects, nasty talk, and even, gosh, criminal subjects... and I can pretty tell I had never felt so stressed out, violated and angered before the "miraculous" invention of the cell phones. People were still interested for one another more than on their gadgets ten/twelve years ago in my country. I suppose I was the last generation to enjoy a healthful childhood. Today's generation hasn't got half of the love I had, because the majority of their fathers and mothers are so much interested in the newest technologies they can't afford to really care how their sons do feel. You have never seen so much young people depressed, at the tether's end, because no one will pay attention to them, nobody cares for anything, anyone. People are showing their true colours, and I repeat, it is horrible.

Ok, the cell phone helps everybody in emergencial situations, it must have saved - since it's spread - some tens of thousands, if not millions of lives, I couldn't possibly disagree. But what about all the whimsical, needless, ridiculous gab you can't help but hear? The cell phone has become the greatest nuisance of the world - conversations you have heard made you deeply despise dozens of people you had never a chance to know on the public transport, just by the way they talk, by their gestures, and by the smallness, pettiness and insignificance of what they are talking about. Sometimes you can't believe what you've just heard, so you give the benefit of the doubt. And I put my hand on the Bible to tell you I have heard a woman sitting on my side in the bus talking on the phone, and I did everything one possibly can do to refrain my mind from paying attention to what she was talking about and be mindful on the book I was presently reading, but I couldn't. I simply couldn't. I overheard the sexual intonation of her voice and I thought: "Gosh, is it really happening? Because I can't believe it. I don't want to acknowledge such a base conversation is taking place and I can't help but listen to it" (it takes me one hour and fifteen minutes to come home from university, and if I stood up I would lose my seat to some passenger who was already standing up and arrive with my legs terribly tired at home, after a full day). But the truth came to my ears. She was sexually stimulating the guy on the other side of the line. She was kinkily asking him to repeat very base words in Portuguese which I won't translate. She too was being sexually aroused by his talk. I lost all the control I head. I started staring at her, I really gave her the best - or the worst, if you prefer - of my evil eye. She stopped that BS almost instantly. I cherish that moment since that day. Because it was then that I discovered that if people can annoy me, I can also protect myself using my own free will. I will not be a sheep, because I won't believe the magician, nor in the heaven-like afterlife.

Nobody has got chains on you - yet.