UNITED STATES—What is it about Americans nowadays where they seem to care nothing about the impact their behavior has on others. Just the other day I was out and about, and a man nearly careened right into me because he was on his cell phone and not paying attention.

I mean, “What the hell?” Why do people exhibit this same behavior time and time again, without any remorse for doing it to begin with? We live in a world where our gadgets are like new companions, we don’t converse we just use machines to do it all for us. This is just one of my rants for the week.

When it comes to great customer service, you expect the staff to acknowledge you; well that is not always the case. I sat at a department store for about 5-10 minutes waiting for someone to cash out my order. I was just mere seconds away from just dropping the items and saving myself a few dollars. I mean nothing irritates me more when the consumer is considered irrelevant. I wouldn’t have thrown a fit if I knew the person was busy helping someone else, but that wasn’t the case. Crazy, right?

It seems Americans are lacking the skills of common courtesy. Saying thank you, and goodbye, or apologizing for making mistakes; nope, we don’t care anymore. As long as we get done what we want to get done, no one cares; it’s just how the cookie crumbles. The same thing happened to me at the bank the other day. It was a massive line, and right before closing.

One guy is off in la-la land on his cell phone, when the banker acknowledged on multiple times she could help him. Even after several customers attempted to tell the person he still didn’t put his cell phone down, it was only after a patron tapped on his shoulder he realized he was holding up the line. I think it’s so rude for a person to be careless of another person’s time. Time is so valuable, I mean we only have 24 hours in a day (well technically its 23 hours and some minutes), but when you subtract the amount of time we sleep and work, we have less than 5-6 hours to ourselves. Yes, very scary!

It’s almost like people need to be taught once again the rules of etiquette. How to say excuse me, how to apologize, how to speak to people, etc? I mean nothing is worse then seeing a person just blow a casket for no reason and think its okay. Yeah, anyone who works in the retail industry knows my pain. The customer is to be treated as always being right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean, you’re always right. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Being a jack*** because you can shouldn’t condone it.

That could be because we live in this world where we think we are to cater to the butts of the people who sign our checks. No, you don’t. As long as I’m doing my job and I’m doing it well is all that matters, anything else is what it is. I hate to see people think, it is a given that they should receive this, that and the rest. Leave your bubble for a few moments won’t you.

If we don’t stop acting like the airheads and carefree Americans we are, we are only passing that same behavior to the next generation who will do the same to the next generation and so on. I had a co-worker write a piece about chivalry being dead. We debated back and forth about it, where I thought it still existed, while she didn’t think so. I’m starting to believe her point? Why?

I can’t tell you how many times I hold the door for women to enter because it was something I was taught as a child, I’d say a good 60 percent always say thank you, but there is that 40 percent who just assume it is to be done. But seriously is it that hard for you to utter 2 words: THANK YOU.

I don’t think common courtesy is something that people just automatically do, its something that you are taught. We need to get back to a place where we teach our children, teens, adults and the elderly it’s important to treat others the same way that you would like to be treated.