I know courtesy has been discussed on this forum before but I recently began to answer another posting and found that after the guy had detailed his problem and asked for ideas to solve it, he didn’t bother to “sign” the post or say “thanks”.
If we’re going to ask people for a thoughtful response, that can take significant time to write out or may require a posting of photos, we should offer up some common courtesy…although I guess it’s not so common any more.
Why not end our postings with something like…“Thanks in advance for any help you can provide” and then give your first name. I realize we’re in a cyberspace world today where people only communicate through brief emails, but it would be nice to be able to respond to a poster and say “Hey John, here’s my resolution to your problem”. I don’t think giving out a first name is going to place anybody at risk.
I, for one, would like to know who I’m talking to, even if all I know is their first name and that they’re from the United States. And, by the way, when you indicate where you’re from when you sign onto this forum, you should be specifying which state, not the United States. Heck, if you want to be real cute, why don’t you just say you’re from the Earth. That would really narrow it down and at least I wouldn’t worry that I was talking to someone from Mars or Jupiter.
There are a select group of knowledgable model railroaders in this forum that respond to almost all posts with helpful information and I personally thank them. But I don’t expect a thank-you response from most newbies asking questions.
I realize it’s not 1950…I was just trying to suggest that manners be used. Remember the saying that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Well, it’s not true…you can.
I don’t really know about Venus, but I will tell you that sometimes it seems my wife is from outer space. [(-D]
Jupiter and Mars. Hmmm
“When the Moon is in the Seventh House,
And Jupiter aligns with Mars,
Then peace will guide the planets,
And love will steer the stars.
This is the dawning of
The Age of Aquarius,
The Age of Aquarius,
Aquarius, Aquarius.”
Jeez, Andre … I can remember bopping down the road in my two-tone red & rust 1962 VW bug listening to that on my 8-track. Goodness gracious.
Moonbeam
(I was more of a Hippie lookalike. In truth, I was too poor to actually be a flowerchild. I knew who had all the good grass, I just couldn’t afford it. [angel])
Times change, and so do rearing habits. Most of us use courtesy from force of habit, and we developed the habit early, in the vast majority of cases, because we got a thick ear from Dad if we didn’t. Today, child rearing is a science, don’t you know, far beyond the capabilities of the ordinary parent. We could be charged with abuse if we were to thicken the ear of a truculent child. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds, but everyone does what is in their interest as an assigned priority. We can assume that some people don’t give much currency to civility or to courtesy as it was defined in our time. Courtesy now seems to be not making eye contact, tuning out with headphones, and generally being uninvolved with anything except a keyboard and a mouse.
You mean like the clerk in the store who says “have a nice day”? Do any of them really mean it? There was a time when a woman would not think of going to church without a dress or skirt, stockings, high heels, a hat, and gloves! Now-a-days, your lucky they don’t have a big rip in a bad part of their dungarees!! I’m 64 and work in a Home Depot - I’ve long ago lost track of all the "Hey you"s, and they’re not always from “kids”. Just a sign of the times.[:o)]
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I was actually an astronomer. We bounced radar beams off of Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
Jupiter never sent anything back. Venus and Mars were right on time.
Y’know what’s really weird about Venus? It rotates very slowly, and it does so in such a way that it always points the same side towards the earth when the two are at their closest approach. They call it a “spin-orbit resonance.”
I’m sure this will help explain the differences between men and women, but I just don’t know how.
Come on! You can’t knock “Have a nice day”! It’s such a useful expression… You can put so many nuances into the way you say it…
Just like “Please”, “Thankyou”, “Sir”, “Madam”, “Miss”, “Master” (a boy under 14 here - if one is old enough to have been taught such niceties), “Mr xxxxx” etc etc.
My Sargeant Majors fought in Aden and were the toughest thing I ever want to meet. They taught me (or was that “convinced” me) that it didn’t matter what went on in my head nothing showed on my face and I used the correct form of words in the correct way. At the same time absolutely everyone knew that miniscule inflections indicated levels of respect or disrespect.
Once on the railway I showed respect for my good managers (mostly my inspectors who knew how to do the job because they had done it) by using their title and surname. I could equally show disrespect for bad managers (most of the “management trainees”) by using their title and surname… especially as the trend - introduced by management - was for us ‘all-to-be-equal/friends’ and use first names all of the time. I could drive the latter nuts by “being polite/correct” because it put a distance between me and them that their culture was trying to say wasn’t there – the fact was that they would still try to use you as a scapegoat and dump on you at the drop of a hat.
I would never have dreamt of using my Inspectors’ first names at work back then. Out of work one switched to first names if invited. One means of warning that offense had been caused or that one was out-of-line was to re-introduce the title and surname. If one was socially aware one picked up on the signal.
Much later when I was dealing with the public some complete idiot at head office sent down a decree that when we knew the “customer’s” (passengers ha
Several years ago I decided to take a summer off from work. I grew bored quickly and thought it might be a change of pace to work part time in retail.
It didn’t work out.
My hat is off to you. Some people can work with the public, some can’t. I’m in the latter camp. If anyone ever wants to see the unwiped anus of humanity, spend some time working in retail. Complete rudeness and disrespect aside, some of the things people do in stores with their bodily fluids (all of them) are completely unbelievable.
I finally came to believe there are only two kinds of people who ever shop in a big-box hardware store: those who live in singlewides, and those who live in doublewides; unfortunately, both types have got a pack of dogs living under the front porch.
Maybe slightly off topic, but when people ask a question, it would be nice if they would put the question or at least something about what the question is about in the subject line !! Take a look thru the posts there’s always some who’s subject line is only “I have a question” or “Would this work?” or “Does this happen??”. I generally go by the subject line to decide whether to open up a topic, so if the subject line doesn’t tell me what the subject of the entry is about, I usually don’t bother. A subject line like “problem with Life-Like RS-11” or “What color were Southern GP-9’s?” is much more likely to get an answer because it’s more likely to be opened by someone with some knowledge of the subject.
A friend of mine once had a summer job (as a teenager or young 20-something) as a gas station attendant. Someone came up and politely began calling him “Sir.”
He responded, “I’m not “Sir.” I’m “Hey, you” just like everyone else.”