Monday 4 May 2009

People These Days

Is the world becoming a nastier place? Or do people just not react as well these days whenever they are told something they don't like? In the past two weeks I've been witness to two unpleasant incidents..

1) I was waiting in line at the Star Mart checkout one night wanting to renew my bus pass quickly before my bus arrived, when this guy came in and asked the Indian man if he had a marker on him. The Indian man told him he didn't have one, and that's when the man launched his racial, bad-mouthed tirade at the Indian man as he walked out. In a slightly more pleasant way, he replied to the Indian man

"How can you not have a marker you man of Indian origin?" (Insert your own expletives where appropriate)

2) Today I was waiting at the traffic lights as I was walking back to the city from the Grafton campus. There was a group of people at the traffic lights, and this man on his bike had just cycled to our corner of the intersection. Instead of getting off his bike and pushing it through the crowd of people, he remained on his bike, trying to walk/cycle it amongst the crowd. That's when a man tried to remind him it was a footpath and not a cycle track. The man on the bike turned around and in a more pleasant way of putting things said

"A footpath? A footpath? You want me to go and bike on the road you aged man?" (Insert your own expletives where appropriate)

It's quite sad we're treating each other this way these days. What happened to being nice to each other? I suppose if it's cool to to be different, and being nice is a rarity these days, then it's cool to be nice...right?

No comments:

Post a Comment