On consideration, public space and the small things we do to make life easier for one another

I’ve always been annoyed by bad manners because I was raised to understand that other people exist.

You wait your turn. You let people off the train before getting on. You say please and thank you. You cover your mouth when you cough. You don’t make an entire bus listen to your phone conversation.

None of this is complicated.

And yet, every time I use public transportation, walk through a crowded city or deal with a stranger, I find myself wondering what happened to basic manners.

I’m not talking about old-fashioned etiquette. I couldn’t care less which fork you use at dinner or whether you know which glass is supposed to hold which wine.

I’m talking about something much simpler.

Consideration.

You don’t have to like people. You simply have to remember that they exist.

Public space isn’t your living room

Few things irritate me more than people standing directly in front of the doors of a subway, tram or train while everyone inside is trying to get off.

The doors open. People are trying to leave. And there they are, standing directly in the way, already preparing to get on.

Why?

Just wait, let people get off, then get on.

The same applies to queues.

There’s a reason we queue. Everyone waits their turn and eventually gets served. Cutting the line is essentially saying that your time matters more than everyone who arrived before you. It’s disrespectful!

Then there are the people who seem to believe public transportation is an extension of their living room.

Videos playing loudly. Music without headphones. Loud phone conversations. Shouting across the carriage. Bags occupying seats while people are standing.

A crowded bus or train is a shared space. Nobody else should be forced to participate in your private life simply because you happen to be sitting next to them.

The same goes for assigned seats. If your ticket says 14A, that’s your seat. It shouldn’t be controversial.

These things sound trivial, but that’s precisely the point. Living among other people requires thousands of tiny acts of awareness that take almost no effort.

Some things should stay private

Then there’s basic hygiene.

Cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze. Cover it when you yawn.

If you’re sick, blow your nose rather than sitting beside strangers on a crowded bus and sniffing continuously for an hour. Also, wear a mask, it costs nothing and protects those around you.

And please, for the love of everything, don’t spend your commute picking your nose, scratching yourself or inspecting parts of your body that don’t need to become public entertainment.

There are things may be normal for some to do in private, but they don’t need to be performed in front of strangers.

Good manners are about understanding where you are and how your behavior affects the people around you.

Food is another example.

You might love the smell of whatever you’re eating. The person sitting beside you might want to vomit.

Not everyone likes the smell of fish, heavily spiced food or whatever else you’ve brought into a sealed bus or train. In an open-air setting, eat whatever you want. In a packed carriage, perhaps consider that everyone else has to smell it too.

And then there are smokers.

Someone goes outside, smokes a cigarette and gets back onto a crowded bus as though the smell disappeared when the cigarette did.

It didn’t.

It’s still in their clothes, their hair, their hands and their breath. Sit beside someone who has just smoked in a confined space and you know exactly what I’m talking about. They stink.

People often don’t realize how much they smell because they’re accustomed to their own smell.

The rest of us aren’t.

Please and thank you

Perhaps what bothers me most is how little effort some people seem willing to put into ordinary human interactions.

Someone holds a door open for you.

Say thank you.

Someone gives you directions.

Say thank you.

Someone does something for you that they didn’t have to do.

Say thank you.

And hold the door for the person behind you while you’re at it. You don’t need to make a performance of it. Just don’t let it slam into their face when they’re two steps behind you.

These words and gestures cost almost nothing.

The same applies to asking for help.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve asked a public employee a perfectly reasonable question and received an immediate “no”, without any attempt to find an answer or suggest an alternative.

Sometimes the answer isn’t actually no. They simply can’t be bothered.

I’ve experienced the same thing when asking whether something is vegan in restaurants and dessert shops. Someone will immediately tell me there is nothing vegan, only for me to look at the menu and discover several things that happen to be vegan.

That’s not necessarily hostility. Sometimes it’s just laziness.

If you don’t know, say you don’t know.

If you can find out, find out.

If something genuinely isn’t possible, explain it.

You don’t need to solve everyone’s problems. But if your job is to help people, making the smallest reasonable effort shouldn’t be considered extraordinary.

We have to teach this

This is where I think parents have an enormous responsibility.

Children aren’t born knowing how to queue. They’re not born knowing that they should wait for people to get off a train before boarding. They don’t automatically understand that screaming in a restaurant for an hour affects everyone around them.

They learn these things.

And they learn them from the adults.

Children will be children. They’ll cry, shout, get excited and misbehave. That’s normal.

But there’s a difference between having a child who occasionally makes noise and deciding that everyone else in a restaurant, train or airplane simply has to endure it indefinitely.

The same is true of boundaries.

Children need to learn that other people’s belongings are not theirs. Other people’s bodies are not theirs. Other people’s conversations are not theirs.

And adults need to remember the same things.

Not everything is your business

Some people seem physically incapable of encountering another person’s life without offering an opinion.

What you’re eating.

What you’re wearing.

WHat you’re doing.

Not every thought needs to become a comment.

Not every disagreement requires intervention.

Not every personal decision needs your approval.

Sometimes minding your own business is simply good manners.

The same principle applies to public displays of affection.

Holding hands doesn’t bother me. Neither does a hug or a quick kiss.

But there is a point where affection becomes something more intimate and everyone around you is turned into an unwilling audience.

I don’t care that you’re in love. Good for you.

I just didn’t buy a ticket to your private life.

The disappearing social contract

What bothers me about all of this is not that people are imperfect.

Of course they’re imperfect.

It’s that so many of these behaviors seem to come from the same assumption: I do whatever I want, and everyone else can deal with it.

But shared spaces don’t work that way.

Your freedom doesn’t give you the right to make everyone around you uncomfortable.

You can listen to music. Use headphones.

You can talk to your friend. Keep your voice down.

You can eat. Think about where you’re eating.

You can raise your children however you choose, long as you teach them that other people exist.

You can have an opinion. You don’t have to share it.

You can disagree with someone. You don’t have to disrespect them.

You can refuse to help. You can still do it politely.

Don’t make other people’s lives unnecessarily worse.

That should be an incredibly low bar.

And yet apparently it’s becoming one.

Maybe what we’ve lost isn’t etiquette.

Maybe we’ve become so absorbed in ourselves that we’ve forgotten to notice the people around us.

Good manners aren’t about being proper.

They’re about being considerate.

And perhaps the simplest definition is still the best one: Good manners are what happen when you remember that other people exist.

Food for thought.

Thanks for reading.

Teekay