I feel as though what drives most rude / inconsiderate behavior I experience IRL on a day to day basis comes from a place of having this unearned and unnecessary sense of urgency in situations that aren't actually urgent. I think if more people became aware of this completely unnecessary sense of urgency in situations that actually aren't urgent, it might make co-existing and sharing public spaces with other people a lot easier and more tolerable.
That text post that's been making the rounds that goes something like "Omg you made it to the same red light as everyone else but faster and more dangerously and recklessly, should we call nascar? Do you want a medal?" summarizes exactly what I'm trying to talk about.
It's like when I have to change buses at one of the bigger and busier bus stops, and the people who get off the same bus as me shove and elbow past me to get off before me, and then shove and elbow past anyone even slightly in their way on the way to the bus they're switching to, only to end up on the same bus as all the people they shoved and elbowed, with several minutes to spare before it leaves and plenty of open seats left.
I think this unnecessary urgency a lot of people feel in their day to day lives drives a lot of bad behavior. I'm not saying I'm innocent of this (is anyone?), I've felt it too in plenty of situations that didn't call for it, and regrettably was less kind than I should have been as a result. But I try to be aware of it, and always try to ask myself it it's really as urgent as my lizard brain is trying to tell me it is, and even if it was urgent, does that still justify unkind behavior?
Is shoving or elbowing another person aside going to make the difference between whether or not you make it to the bus before it pulls away? (hint: at least where I live, most of the time that's a no because the drivers usually won't leave if they see people from another bus heading towards their bus). Is shoving and elbowing people aside in a crowded grocery store going to make any real difference in how quickly you get your shopping done?
Does a few extra seconds of time actually justify cruel and unkind behavior towards people you perceive as slightly inconveniencing you?
It’s such a beautiful trait of the Prophet ﷺ how he would give his undivided attention to those he would talk to. He wouldn’t just turn his face but he would turn his whole body and make everyone feel like they were his favourite. Something i think we tend to fall short in.
Disclaimer: I'm autistic and I over think and over talk about things. This post is so long, but my biggest special interest is other humans and I obsess over relationship dynamics. (Relationships meaning ANY human-to-human interactions.)
I am writing this bc I am genuinely confused, kinda hurt, and curious if I've ID'ed a relativity recent cultural change and if so, what's driving it? And how can I deal.
Here goes, what happened to apologizing? As a basic act of human decency? Full inquiry under the cut.
So where have apologies gone in customer service positions when you've actually fucked up, I mean, specifically?
I promise this is not "kids these days!" or "no one wants to work anymore!" shit. I know that front line customer service jobs are THE WORST. I worked them for 8 years (fast food and retail). I get how awful customers can be. I've observed how treatment of folks in these roles is worse now than ever.
When I'm out in public, I'm really nice...like really really nice. I can be a menace to people I know when I'm in a bad place, but the last thing I wanna be is contributing stressors to folks in customer facing roles. Yet I eat a lot of fast food and thusly, people make my orders wrong a lot. If it's a small error, I just deal and move on. But more often it's a case of not getting all the items we paid for--which I can't afford to do. But also even when I have it all, I can't always DEAL and eat stuff made totally the wrong way, so I often will return and ask that I get what I actually ordered.
That's no big problem. It's annoying, but I have the emotional fortitude and patience to get over it and advocate for myself, kindly and politely. This involves sometimes driving all the way from home, back somewhere I just left to get what I ordered.
And somewhere along the way, I realized that no body was apologizing anymore. Like at all. I travel frequently for work so I've observed it not just where I live in Texas or where I go regularly to see family in Indiana, but also in CA, CO, FL, NM, and NV now too.
The ole brain which collects data I don't want to and patterns that don't matter has told me that BY FAR the most common response in these moments is that the person at the counter/window kinda stares blankly at me, goes to grab the correct item and silently thrusts it at me and waits for me to take it and walk away. And even after I thank them, 0 words are said to me.
I don't know how to say it other than it feels dehumanizing. I don't need anything fancy--but I'd like to be treated like a fellow human being standing there, at the very least.
I'm not talking about being a fawning sycophant to me.
I'm not asking for free shit.
I'm not wanting anyone to get in trouble or be blamed.
I'm not saying that an irate customer should be apologized to.
I'm just looking for what, to me, is a very normal, human kindness response of a quick, "Oh sorry about that! One sec..." type thing when the other person has also given them basic human kindness.
It's happened again today, so I feel like I'm losing my marbles. And it's been making me upset enough that my partner and I did a count of this over the past 2 months ish and it has now occurred 7 times out of 8 situations. (One person said sorry very kindly. I almost cried tears of joy on the spot like a freak when they did.)
I mean this next part so sincerely--what's happening? Is it anticipation that the customer may be a jerk bc that's what's usual? It is generational shifts? Is it changes in corporate training practices?! I'm grasping at straws bc I desperately want to know WHY.
I quite literally CANNOT operate in public the way that they are, to anyone, ever. If I bump into someone extremely lightly, I'm already apologizing before I can even THINK of anything else. It just happens. When I worked a fast food window, I was the same. This YOU MUST SAY SORRY is ingrained in me whether I like it or not and traces back to my grandmother's raising of me. Where I come from she'd say it something like, "your home training is better than that!!!!!! You're embarrassing me, go back there, be polite, and stop showing your ass." if I didn't immediately apologize to someone when I was a kid/teen.
[[[I'm of the generation of women who not long ago were trying to unlearn the knee-jerk overly apologetic behavior in the workplace and such, and I decided that I like being this way.]]]
Listen, as an autistic person, I love me some rules that make sense. It makes sense to me to say sorry if you do something that's less than ideal to a stranger in public.
I am trying to rearrange my thinking to not have my feelings hurt when this occurs. But let's be real, I'm getting my feelings hurt by it currently.
Is this just me? You'd be my fave person if you read this all and have something to add into the mix 💗
"Dear Sidley Twins, again you've used my research during a YouTube video on Harry & Megs without crediting me or my blog (Istanbul Turkey April 2015). From 2017-2020 anonymous royal watchers on Tumblr & Facebook laid the foundation that you and dozens (if not hundreds) of citizen journalists/content creators/authors have built your royal watching careers upon. I'm proud of you & your work. We can all resist the free-rider problem by using citations or simply saying, 'thank you.' "- Grits Gal || My tumblr blog is GRITS-Gal- Raised-In-The-South
Screen grabs used on Sidley Twins Episode Aug 11th 2026
Mancur Olson's economic problem has stuck with me since undergraduate school. It's always interesting to see it manifest in such unsuspecting environments. If you enjoyed Freakanomics, you might be interested wikipedia's summary of Olson's work:
Summary from Wikipedia: "The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups is a book by Mancur Olson Jr. published in 1965. It develops a theory of political science and economics of concentrated benefits versus diffuse costs. Its central argument is that concentrated minor interests will be overrepresented and diffuse majority interests trumped, due to a free-rider problem that is stronger when a group becomes larger."
"The book challenged the propositions that if everyone in a group (of any size) has interests in common, then they will act collectively to achieve them; and in a democracy, the greatest concern is that the majority will tyrannize and exploit the minority. It argues instead that individuals in any group attempting collective action will have incentives to "free ride" on the efforts of others if the group is working to provide public goods.
In economics, the free-rider problem is a type of market failure that occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods and common pool resources do not pay for them or under-pay. Free riders may overuse common pool resources by not paying for them, neither directly through fees or tolls, nor indirectly through taxes. Consequently, the common pool resource may be under-produced, overused, or degraded. Additionally, despite evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature (a prosocial behaviour), the presence of free-riders has been shown to cause cooperation to deteriorate, perpetuating the free rider problem.
In social science, the free-rider problem is the question of how to limit free riding and its negative effects in these situations, such as the free-rider problem of when property rights are not clearly defined and imposed. The free-rider problem is common with public goods which are non-excludable and non-rivalrous. The non-excludability and non-rivalry of public goods results in there being little incentive for consumers to contribute to a collective resource as they enjoy its benefits as per the Tragedy of the commons.
A free rider may enjoy a non-excludable and non-rivalrous good such as a government -provided road system without contributing to paying for it. Another example is if a coastal town builds a lighthouse, ships from many regions and countries will benefit from it, even though they are not contributing to its costs, and are thus "free riding" on the navigation aid. A third example of non-excludable and non-rivalrous consumption would be a crowd watching fireworks. The number of viewers, whether they paid for the entertainment or not, does not diminish the fireworks as a resource. In each of these examples, the cost of excluding non-payers would be prohibitive, while the collective consumption of the resource does not decrease how much is available.
Although the term "free rider" was first used in economic theory of public goods, similar concepts have been applied to other contexts, including collective bargaining, antitrust law, psychology, political science, and vaccines. For example, some individuals in a team or community may reduce their contributions or performance if they believe that one or more other members of the group may free ride.
The economic free-rider problem is equally pertinent within the realm of global politics, often presenting challenges in international cooperation and collective action. In global politics, states are confronted with scenarios where certain actors reap the benefits of collective goods or actions without bearing the costs or contributing to the efforts required to achieve these shared objectives. This phenomenon creates imbalances and hampers cooperative endeavors, particularly in addressing transnational challenges like climate change, global security, or humanitarian crises. For instance, in discussions on climate change mitigation, countries with lesser contributions to greenhouse gas emissions might still benefit from global efforts to reduce emissions, enjoying a stable climate without proportionally shouldering the costs of emission reductions. This creates a disparity between states' contributions and their gains, leading to challenges in negotiating and implementing effective international agreements. The economic free-rider problem's manifestation in global politics underscores the complexities and obstacles encountered in fostering collective action and equitable burden-sharing among nations to address pressing global issues."
Without selective incentives to motivate active participation, collective action is unlikely to occur even when large groups of people with common interests exist. The book notes that large groups will face relatively high costs when attempting to organize for collective action while small groups will face relatively low costs, and individuals in large groups will gain marginally less per capita. Hence, in the absence of selective incentives, the incentive for group action diminishes as group size increases, so that large groups are less able to act in their common interest than small ones.
The book concludes that, not only is collective action by large groups difficult to achieve even when they have interests in common, but situations could occur where the minority (bound together by concentrated selective incentives) can dominate the majority."
