Thursday, April 16, 2009

Oprah wants to know if you're a rude person

I think its safe to say that there are rude people everywhere. I wonder if there is a study to find where the rudest people in America are...? Probably. i can't find it, but there's a study about everything anymore, its just a matter of finding it. From what i did find, the internet says that Miami is the rudest city in America. i'm not saying this is true, i've never been there. In all honestly i haven't had a lot of people be rude to me in my life. At least nothing is jumping out in my memory at least. Except for Utah drivers...(i love all my Utah friends! you all drive awesome! most of you are implants...love you!).

Ok, the more i think about it, there have been people that were rude to me. Mostly on the road though. And i do remember this one time while i was in college working at Wal-Mart as a cashier, this lady cornered me in the parking lot while i was walking to my car and accused me of trying to ruin her marriage. i had NO idea what she was talking about of coarse. I had only seen her once before in my life and it was 15 minutes earlier when she came through my line and had grilled me about my personal life. But she yelled at me trying to make me fess up, and i stood there and listened and then told her either she had the wrong girl or her husband was lying to her because nothing she said about me was true, and i walked away. i cried on the phone to the guy i was dating at the time while i drove home. i was lucky to make it to the car before i started the crying though. The next day she came in on "his" arm while wearing a butt length trashy mini skirt and a smug look on her face. The guy wasn't even cute, he was creepy looking. And i know i would remember if i had "flirted" with him. I had never seen him before though. The whole thing was rude in my opinion.

But yeah, i have seen people do rude things to other people. Grade school and high school kids are mean ruthless rude little people. I pray we don't screw up when we raising our kids and they all turn out like that (john is such a good person i doubt it could happen though). People get more rude with the growth of technology i think too. Phones are a huge contributor. And people more and more often assume that they have the right to take whatever they want, do whatever they want, and make everyone do what they tell them... I won't mention any names, but i did have a particular roommate a while ago that felt free to go in my room and take anything she wanted (my iron, my clothes, makeup, cd's), and she also had a habit of using every dish in the entire kitchen while she covered it in mess and then leave for the rest of the day without cleaning any of it up. After cleaning up after her one too many times so i could actually use the kitchen i resolved the issue by making a no mess policy posted on the cabinet with a $5 fine for breaking the rule. i never had that problem again. When she would blow fuses in the circuit breaker causing half the house to lose power, she wouldn't fix it. she would leave it for someone else to fix if they needed power. One of the rudest people i ever met. If you know what the color code test is, she was a strong RED. I'll be the first to admit that there are positives and negatives about all the colors, and i have my own red moments when i'm at the very end of my patience, but this girl was a full-on huge negative of the red category, all the time, every day.

Oprah put a survey in her "O" Magazine called the Are You a Rude Person Quiz. i don't read her magazine personally, but i don't read any magazines except when i go to my parents and they have the Readers Digest sitting around. But i heard about this quiz and it got me thinking: Am i a rude person? Do i do rude things not realizing they're rude? So i did the quiz. They're all Yes or No questions:


1. Are you chronically late?

2. Have you ever typed an e-mail while talking on the phone?

3. Have you ever interrupted a face-to-face conversation to take a non-urgent cell phone call?

4. Have you gone through a supermarket 10-item express lane with more than 10 items?

5. While among friends or co-workers, have you yawned without covering your mouth?

6. Have you ever texted or talked on a cell phone in a movie theater?

7. Have you let your dog relieve himself on your neighbor's lawn?

8. Have you ever cut in front of someone in line?

9. Have you ever stolen someone's parking spot?

10. Have you ever let your child kick the back of the seat in front of him and not apologized to his victim?

11. Have you ever not RSVP'd to an event by the date requested?

12. Have you ever gossiped?

13. Have you ever taken someone else's food or drink from the office refrigerator?

There were 3 things on it i had to say "yes" to. They aren't things i make a habit of doing, but i'm a rude person i guess. I'm a wimp and didn't submit my answers to find exactly how rude i am though. Saying Yes to some of them is enough to realize i need to be paying more attention to what i do. My problem with this quiz is that i think there should be more questions on it. Things like: Do you return your cart to the cart return, or do you leave it in the middle of the parking lot for other people to hit when they try to get into a parking spot? Do you swear in public? Do you wear extremely revealing and/or tight clothing to places where that isn't appropriate or wear low cut jeans to show off your thong? Do you ever talk down to people to make them feel inferior? Do you clean up after yourself when you make a mess in a place other people use (like at a fast food restaurant)? Do you drive 6 feet away from the car in front of you on purpose because you think they're going too slow?

So, there's my rant on the subject. What do you think? What do you think is rude of other people to do? How rude are you? It doesn't really matter. i just got stuck thinking about this today so i wonder what the rest of the world thinks about it. I hope no one is being rude to any of you :)

1 comment:

Liz and Grant said...

Yes, yes,and yes. I agree 100% with you, especially about utah drivers. I was venting about the bad dirvers one day after I had been rear-ended for the 2nd time in a month, and said "utah drivers are awful!" too bad all of the girls I worked with were from utah, and a little "uppity" and had defend Utah like their lives depended on it. All I had to say is that my insurance went up when we moved here because it's not as safe as other states, that shut them up.