Are you rude? I’m Kinda and sorta…

I was so engrossed with my facebook last night that I forgot to change the channel. Believe it or not, I just discovered facebook. I’m so happy to see my elementary and high school classmates at Tiong San (Chinese High School) and my long lost friends. While writing on the wall of my friend I overheard Oprah asking everyone if they’re rude. ‘Are you rude?’ she asked again. I stopped typing and I was glued. Yeah, I love Oprah but there was a time that I stopped watching her. After she endorsed Barack Obama, I swore that I’ll hate her forever. But who could hate her? She’s Oprah after all.

Back to rudeness topic, I don’t consider myself as rude really. Like Oprah, I’m kinda and sorta… LOL. Maybe I’m rude but I just don’t know that I am. It’s not really surprising since in the survey according to Oprah about 90% of people say that other people are rude while 85% of the respondents also say that they’re not rude. That means we may be rude but are not aware about it.

Till now I kept on thinking if I’m rude but couldn’t really say that I am. I’ve also asked myself if I’m mean or not. Admittedly, there were times that I am really mean. According to Oprah’s guest (I forgot his name ..sorry), There’s a difference between being rude and being mean. Rudeness means the person is not aware of what he is doing. Being mean on the other hand has malice. You’re conscious and aware and you have the purpose in embarrassing the person. You’re normally mean to people that you don’t like.

You’ll encounter rude people everywhere in your everyday life. Below are just plain example of how rude can people be.

• Officemates who stole your food and coke at the pantry.
• Loud mouthed officemates (e.g. Howard in the cartoon Dilbert).
• People whose ringtones are very loud and answers phone at a seminar
• People who stole parking spaces
• People who belittles food service workers
• Not waiting for your turn and not following the queue (very common in remittance center).
• People who interrupt other people’s conversation
• Officemates with habitual tardiness habit.
• Typing or composing an email while still on the phone.

The list goes on and on and most of us do not really think that what we’re doing constitute rudeness. Technology has greatly affected people’s behavior. The external influence and globalization has eroded our deeply rooted Filipino values. Parents nowadays have no control in terms of the influences that technology and other cultures do to their children. The best thing that we could do is to learn the basics, go back to the lessons of our GMRC class.