Rude Service Today’s Hot Commodity
Paying to be treated rudely strikes Miss Manners as a curious commercial transaction.
Why would anyone pay good money for bad behavior, especially these days?
Rudeness, if that is what one craves, is so readily available for free.
But Miss Manners supposes this is not the only kinky taste whose attractions elude her. Understand it or not, she knows that part of the market is devoted to supplying this commodity.
Restaurants exist that succeed not in spite of bad service but because of it. By making their customers wheedle to get a reservation, wait to be seated long after the designated time, and fork over bribes to avoid being placed uncomfortably and left to languish unattended, these establishments attract business.
Shops with haughty salespeople seem able to get especially high prices for their goods. The clearer they make it that they won’t stoop to being pleasant and efficient in order to attract or retain customers, the more they flourish.
Nor is it only advanced snobs who harbor this quirky taste. Nightclubs that post employees outside to insult and bar those they consider unfashionable are besieged with pleading youths.
We are not talking about the sort of old-time place where one of the attractions is a pithy dialogue between customers and help. That is a sport, with each side given a chance to triumph over the other.
What puzzles Miss Manners is the attraction of places where the tone is, “We don’t need or want you here,” and the response is, “Oh, please, please, let me in.” She is always hearing of some newly legendary hotel or bar where the legend consists of outrages administered to the patrons by the help.
Satisfied customers delight in reciting examples, and when she timidly asks why they submit, the answer is that the place is so hot and trendy that they can’t stay away. Miss Manners recognizes the reasoning, if one may call it that, as that which also governs teen-age romance: “You must be good enough for me because you act like you’re too good for me.”
That is all very well for consenting teen-agers, but she has a problem with it in the adult world. Like the widespread admiration for insults as jokes and swearing as ordinary discourse, it brings down the standard.
It also enables businesses to charge more to avoid it. Along with the current stories of rudeness for sale, Miss Manners keeps hearing about businesses that make special efforts - sending presents and handwritten notes, doing personal favors and errands - but only for certain high-spending customers.
These are people who are unwilling to pay extra for rudeness but willing to pay extra for acts of friendship. Miss Manners has no objection to that, either, and even finds it more reasonable, if not any more enticing.
But she worries about the customers who were left out of this system. Some people don’t want those with whom they do business to embarrass them or to coddle them. They just want cheerful cooperative service. But the catch is that they expect it to be thrown in for free.
Dear Miss Manners: How can I tactfully get friends to return books that I have loaned them?
Gentle Reader: By continuing to do what you intended when you loaned those books to friends - urging them to read them.
Every chance you get, you should ask whether your friend has read that wonderful book yet. It shouldn’t take more than two or three times before the friend starts telling you how terribly busy he is - overworked, with a lot of other reading to do, and so on.
At that point you say, “Why don’t I take it back, then, and lend it to you again when you have time?” Miss Manners promises you that your friend will be as happy to be rid of it as ever he was to borrow it.
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate