I was waiting for a bus on Oxford Street, standing about 3 feet away from the bus shelter, along with lots of other people (it was Saturday and the place was absolutely heaving).
One of two Arabic-speaking girls (early 20s?), in headscarves (colourful, not black), suddenly turned to a white woman (in her 60s, eating snacks out of a plastic bag) and asked: "When is the bus coming?"
I thought they were together, all 3 of them, since the young woman asked the older one.
Then I heard the white woman say, "If I knew the answer, I'd be up there with God, not standing here on this pavement, would I?" Not very nice, but some people do resort to a bit of sarcasm.
Then the white woman added, "YOU STUPID WOMAN!"
I saw the young woman move away from her as if she'd been slapped, and she looked so hurt, and puzzled too, so I went up to her and said, pointing at the GPS display panel, "You can have a look at the display panel up on the shelter. It tells you which bus is coming and when."
A few seconds later, I felt something more had to be done, so I went over to the bus shelter, where the young woman was still smarting, and said to her, "I feel so sorry for you. Poor you. That was most unnecessary. She didn't have to be so horrible to you."
She asked me, "Is she your friend? Are you with her?" I said, "No."
I should've added, "My friends don't behave like that, and even if she had been a friend, she wouldn't be my friend anymore."
The young woman said to me, "You are so kind. Thank you for being so kind."
Sad, isn't it, that kindness is not assumed to be standard behaviour? Like being surprised these days when people are polite and say thank you, when it should be the norm.
(London, February 2010)
I sympathise. In New York City, which is pictured on global television as rude and violent, people of all kinds will automatically approach anyone looking at a map and just ask,"Where are you going?", then tell them the easiest way to get where they want to go. Common courtesies and kindnesses that I haven't seen recently in London are quite normal here. And people here would not understand the Parisian who pretends not to speak English when asked the way by an American tourist or the driver of a Paris airport bus who laughs when some foreigners miss their stop, and perhaps their plane, because he has taken a short cut and they haven't pressed the bell.
ReplyDeleteI agree too. Regardless of what one reads or hears, I have always personally experienced a "friendliness by default" in all US cities I have lived in, and a "rudeness by default" in many places in Europe. In Rome, a bus driver rolled his eyes and loudly made fun of me (in an unfriendly way) when I asked where a well-known square was. This would be quite unthinkable on a US bus (let alone in New Orleans, that is rather special with "Southern hospitality"). In Paris a policeman asked me with a contemptuous tone why I could not speak French better than I did.
ReplyDeleteAnd when dealing with offices, stores, phone operators and so on, I think there is a whole culture of "customer service" that seems to be entirely unknown outside the US. I remember hearing a piece on National Public Radio about the first Wal-Mart opened in some German city. The local German staff was trained by American managers, who instructed them to deal with customers by greeting, them, smiling, asking if they could help them, etc. It turned out that many German customers felt uncomfortable at being treated in such friendly manner and the staff had to be re-trained to act more grumpy and unfriendly, the way people are used to being treated there...
A woman from China who'd spent a year in Nottingham doing her MA last year told me how touched she was by the kindness and patience of people there. If she asked a bus driver for directions, he'd ignore the queue building up behind her, treating her as if she was the only customer who had every right to her proper share of service. What's interesting is that she should've found it note-worthy, which implies that it was not something she was used to back home.
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