Unnecessary Politeness

With all of the bad in the world—hurricanes, tsunamis, wars, terrorists, poverty, disease—I am still able to put time aside to complain about something that is allegedly good. Politeness. I’m of the opinion that people need to be nicer to each other in general. Common courtesy is not common enough, and even people who are getting paid to be nice to you sometimes aren’t. But there is a line, a politeness line, and it can be crossed. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. Three examples.

Example 1.
You’re crossing a street on foot. You’re on the KU campus, or downtown Lawrence, where cars are driving fairly slowly. You’re able to gauge how fast the traffic is going, and you’re timing it so you’re going to cross the street behind the next car. You step out into the street, and the car stops to let you cross. Nice, right? No: unnecessary. You weren’t trying to make the car stop. You also weren’t stupid enough to jump out in front of the moving car and get hit. Now the car has stopped unnecessarily, you have to cross, and it interrupted the whole flow.

Example 2.
You’re walking into the movie theater or into work. Someone else is entering in front of you, but you’re about 20 paces behind him or her. He thinks he is being super nice holding the door for you. So he does the long-door-hold, watching you walk toward him for an awkward 20 paces, while you feel like you need to hurry up and get inside so that he isn’t inconvenienced by holding the door too long. You wouldn’t have been offended if he hadn’t held the door; you would have been relieved to not have to sprint through the parking lot to fulfill someone else’s polite quota for the day.

Example 3.
You’re getting your morning coffee. Another morning coffee drinker walks up needing his morning fix. While there is plenty of room for him to grab a cup of coffee and go about his business next to you, he stands 5 feet back and away from you. This causes you to feel like you have to hurry because you’re the only thing standing in between him and his fix. You hurriedly add your sugar and cream and get out of his way, while he smiles awkwardly and politely at you the whole time.

So you see, there are instances where it’s just not necessary to be chivalrous. Instances where it’s weird to be polite. Be polite, dear blog readers, but make it count. Help fellow man out, but don’t get on his nerves by letting him go first at a 4-way stop when it’s clear that you got there a good 30 seconds before he did.