Being the recipient of rudeness is a bummer.
On my recent stay in Singapore, I encountered several instances of rudeness displayed by the service employees.
Here are two instances: one, at a downtown shopping mall, I approached the information desk where the girl manning it was reading a magazine. When I started with “Excuse me…”, she barked “Yah..” without looking up, as though I was interrupting her reading while she was lying on the sofa in her living room.
Another was a dreadful episode at Terminal 3, Singapore International Airport. My friend and I were placing our order at the coffee/toast stand. Another customer returned to the counter to retrieve something. So I move away from my friend to make space for him.
Then another of the workers, a woman carrying out some task behind the counter nearer to me, said “What?” to me with such a harsh tone and an ugly expression that I was shocked, and was caught totally off-guard.
I didn’t escape rudeness when I was up in the air. The Singapore Airline (SIA) flight went smoothly until a stewardess rolled her eyes when she couldn’t hear me. Since I paid a pretty good sum for the airfare, I wasn’t about to let such treatment go. I wrote a letter of complaint at the SIA website. I must say SIA’s response was prompt and very professional.
And rudeness persisted even after I crossed the International Date Line. At the San Francisco International Airport, I was at the immigration counter manned by an officer with the name tag Zhu. She pointed out that I had omitted to fill in a small section of the customs form. And then she added “Didn’t you read?’ After an 18-hour flight, that sarcasm really went down badly. Why couldn’t she be more professional: just ask me to complete the form, and skip the juvenile remark.
There are some motivation/inspiration writers and a school of thought that say that we should try to feel empathy or compassion for people who are rude; maybe they had a bad day or face some problems. Well, I’m not capable of being magnanimous to such individuals. They have no consideration for my feelings; why should I consider theirs.
To me, rude people, like racists, are crude individuals who are on their own sad little power trip. The world can do with less of their negativity and sour spirit.
It’s disgusting but its the culture of the day. And we got to live with it. All such happening, including in Malaysia, is because of the education system.
Hello Pak Idrus. Thanks for your comment. You’re right: a person’s manners is shaped by childhood influences such as
the education system and the quality of parenting.
It’s unfortunate about the rudeness you encountered. The best I can do is not take it personally, as rudeness coming from someone is more a reflection of who they are, and not what I did.
That’s true. The way a person acts and talks tells a lot about his or her character.