Politeness and respect

I have determined, through a completely unscientific study, that everyone deserves a base level of respect when you first meet them. From then they either earn respect or lose it. But you all start as a default position in the middle somewhere. Which gets you called sir. It’s a basic sign of respect. It’s also a matter of being polite. I try to generally be polite.

Now sometimes, I admit, my idea of polite is a very NY thing. It might not seem polite, at times, but it is. I hold doors for people, I call them sir, I generally try to act like a civilized being. It makes the world smoother. That little extra second you take being polite to someone can and will spread very often, and it improves everyone’s day. The more everyone achieves a base level of politeness the less stress there is.

Now, if you have given me reason to stop being polite I certainly will. But you will also generally know when that happens. I am not, to be fair, subtle about it. Generally if I have no need to be polite to you I will simply tell you to shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down. But you have to work at getting me to be that anti-polite. It isn’t easy. It’s a career, I think.

Variations

I do call everyone sir. I also use boss and chief. They mean the same thing but you quickly realize that some people consider being called sir an insult. They think you’re making fun of them, as if only rich people can be sir’d or some shit, or that, generally, calling someone sir is a way of insulting them by mockingly giving them respect. I don’t do that, but I do recognize it. So I also find myself using boss and chief a lot. I want to call it a NY thing but it isn’t, not really.

The trick is learning beforehand when each is appropriate. Someone doing something for you is boss. Someone getting someone else to do something for you is chief. In general. Rule of thumb. Some people prefer one over the other, and as you get to know them you can switch or, better yet I find, ease them into being sir’d. Because at heart people like being called sir. It makes them feel good. It makes them feel respected, which they, in fact, are.

Feminizing

This is always a problem. Some people have a problem with Ma’am, Madame, miss. But then they also have a problem with being called sir. This leaves me in a bit of a quandary at times. Then I shrug and use what feels right for the person. Normally Ma’am, sir, boss or chief. But it does leave me in a bit of a lurch. There seems to be no overall good answer for this.

Which isn’t to say…

Mind you I also curse like a sailor. It was mentioned recently that I literally had a series of sentences where every other word was motherfucker. This was not abnormal. Keep in mind I am still polite. I just also curse. It isn’t from some lack of vocabulary, or from not knowing what else to say. It is just who I am and how I speak. I can turn it off instantly, if I need to. At the opera (Untrue, actually, Wagner always gets a motherfucker out of me at some point.) or at work or around a lot of children or… well you know sometimes it isn’t polite to curse.

But mostly, yeah I am a cursing motherfucker. What the fuck can I say? It’s life.

Overall

Politeness is contagious. Calling people sir, consistently, works better than dude, or man or most other things. It makes the world a tiny bit brighter. It also, to let you in on a secret, opens the door for the single most effective conversation stopped known to man.

Say someone is going on and you are done. You are sick of it and you need to walk away before you put the serving tray through one of his lobes. You aren’t sure what to say. Cursing him out will just make it worse, but the general niceties aren’t working either. He isn’t getting the hint at all. Motherfucker can’t shut it.

So you look at him. You hold up a hand, palm forward. And you say:

Good day, sir!

The “good” needs to explode out of you, like a bullet. Say it forcefully but quick. Firmly. 9 times out of 10 it will stop them cold. Then without another word you turn and walk away.

But what if that 10th time happens? They keep going and don’t listen? Well then you have no choice at all.

I said GOOD DAY!

You bark that at them, not meanly, not cruelly, just flatly and to make them understand that you weren’t fucking around, and then you turn and walk away without another word. It always works. Always.

Anyway…

Good day, sir!