Truth be Told: You’re Being Rude
A driver is in their car at a busy intersection where they’ve come to a full stop. Upon their turn, they progress into the 4-way intersection when a runner comes out of seemingly nowhere and leaps into the crosswalk. The driver is at this point in the middle of the intersection and has come to an immediate stop, thereby preventing other traffic from crossing the intersection. Who in this situation has the right of way? And who in this situation is being rude? The driver? The runner? Have you been in this situation? Likely.
Legally speaking, the driver has the right of way. Say what? Can you repeat that? You mean pedestrians don’t always have the right of way? But everyone knows pedestrians always have the right of way! No, they don’t. At least not according to this article from Driver’s Prep which states:
Normally, state laws also prohibit a pedestrian from suddenly leaving a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle which is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard.
We can surely debate a reasonable interpretation of “immediate hazard,” and for the record I have done so on an actual jury in an unrelated case. But I bring up this specific example because it is one that happens to me often here in San Francisco as both a driver and a runner, and one that I have strong opinions about as it relates to rudeness.
Before I explain my personal interpretation of this scenario I must first disclose my color personality insights. I am equally red (driven by action) and blue (process oriented and driven by efficiency), and less so on yellow (socially-driven) and green (consensus-driven) (for the record those are very broad-stroke descriptions). All color types have their pros and cons, but knowing that I’m both action and efficiency oriented may help you to see it through my lens.
If you haven’t guessed it yet, here are my opinions on this matter:
The driver who stops in the middle of a busy intersection with the purpose of granting permission to a pedestrian not yet in the crosswalk is being rude. How? By preventing the flow of traffic to a pedestrian that doesn’t yet legally have the right of way.
And the runner (or walker, or any form of pedestrian for that matter) who willfully steps off the safety of a curb and into an intersection after a car has already entered the intersection is being rude, for the same reason above.
The timing of this sensitive dance is crucial of course, and requires that both parties be paying attention (let’s be honest, how often does that happen in the first place?). But assuming both parties are paying attention, my sense of what’s right and courteous is what is most efficient for the greater group involved (yes I’m still a small portion green!), including the other cars patiently (or not so patiently) waiting their turn. In other words, if it’s more efficient for the pedestrian to wait 3–4 more seconds for the car not going in the same direction to pass through the intersection than it is for the car to stop and wait 5–8 seconds (while holding up cross-traffic) for the pedestrian to pass, then they should. My math and logic depends on cars being faster than people, and hopefully most people would agree with that.
But who cares about a difference of a few seconds?! I do! My red and blue personality does. The law does! But what about being polite to strangers and letting them pass? Well, which stranger is more important? The stranger in the crosswalk or the stranger in the car behind you?
My point is, I’ve been discovering lately that rudeness is all about perspective. And rudeness has sadly been becoming more contagious.
Before I expand on that last point, let me share with you a very critical lesson I learned about rudeness when I was about ten years old. Scene: elementary school awards ceremony. Me sitting next to my friends. The principal announces to everyone, “Please hold your applause until then end.” In my head I say to myself, “Sure that makes sense, we can hear the names announced more clearly that way and we’ll get through it faster.” One of my friends’ names was announced. I didn’t clap. All of my other friends clapped. And then scowled at me for not clapping. In my head, “They’re being so rude for clapping!” In their heads (I presume), “She’s being so rude for not clapping!” Suffice to say, they weren’t happy with me. Thankfully I switched schools not long after and found new friends who were more of rule followers like me. But also, I’ve since learned when rules should be followed and when it’s socially acceptable to bend or break them, but that’s another topic. For the record, I would now clap (but maybe very quietly).
What really motivated my obsession with this topic is the fact that no one seems to have the patience anymore to wait for me to back out of my driveway in the morning when I’m leaving for work. Just the other day in fact, a woman blazing down my block literally drove on the sidewalk in front of me because she wasn’t willing to wait the few extra seconds for me to finish getting out of her way. We all seem to be losing our patience and it’s making us all more rude.
You can imagine my elation when I stumbled upon the book F You Very Much: Understanding the Culture of Rudeness — and What We Can Do About It, by Danny Wallace in a gift shop. I was not alone! Someone else was obsessing enough about the topic to write a book about it! Not only that, but apparently there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of studies on the very topic of rudeness. Why people are rude. How people define being rude. The impact of rudeness on everything from our emotional well-being to our performance in the workplace. You name it.
Here are some of my favorite fun facts from Wallace’s book, which I’m only about halfway through at the moment of writing this:
[Trevor] Foulk and friends suggest the toxic effect of rudeness — some actually call it a neurotoxin — lasts an entire week. It can spread like wildfire around a contained office, leading to general hostility, lower morale, poorer performance, and worse coffee.
And when trying to understand whether being rude was something humans developed as an evolutionary tool, Wallace interviews Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar, BA PhD DSc, the head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford. Dunbar is famous for the “Dunbar Number” and explains our potential need to be rude as such:
So perhaps being rude to strangers is a way of reinforcing your within-group bonds: you have limited time and energy and you want to confine as much of that as possible to the people that are really going to matter.
What I found really scary was the real impact rudeness can have on our ability to live or die. Apparently the medical community is well aware of this and studies it often. In A Survey of the Impact of Disruptive Behaviors and Communication Defects on Patient Safety by A. H. Rosenstein and M. O’Daniel:
71 percent of [doctors, nurses, and hospital personnel] believed that disruptive behavior — rudeness, abuse, condescension, or insulting personal conduct — led to real medical errors; 27 percent tied it to patient deaths.
So what do we do about all of this rudeness? The world population growth isn’t slowing until the year 2100 according to Pew Research. There will be more and more strangers in our world (despite growing social media, which let’s face it, only gives us a false sense of community — happy to debate that another day). And according to Dunbar, we can only manage a network of 150 relationships. How do we handle these strangers? How do we handle a culture that rewards rudeness in media with famous celebrities like Gordon Ramsey and Simon Cowell?
First, let’s not attempt to pretend that rudeness doesn’t effect us. If the citations above aren’t evidence enough, just trust that it’s scientifically proven that even thinking about rudeness impacts your ability to function (I apologize in advance if I’ve caused you to be less productive today by reading this).
Second, it is critical to try to not take rudeness personally. Because if Dunbar hasn’t convinced you yet, strangers don’t have enough time in the day to care about their effect on you. But what if it isn’t a stranger being rude, but someone in your circle of 150? Still don’t take it personally. In many cases, and I speak from personal experience in situations when I realize I’m the one being rude, rudeness is most often a symptom of projecting someone else’s rudeness that has been imposed on them in the first place.
You must stop the contagion of rudeness. Inoculate yourself. Summon your inner duck and let it roll off of your back. That’s hard. It’s asking a lot. I get it. I still struggle with it every morning when I sheepishly attempt to back out of my driveway hoping there won’t be an aggressive driver greeting me with an unwillingness to let me be on my way in the same manner that they are attempting to go somewhere important. Perhaps this is why there are so many apps these days helping us learn how to meditate. I’ve become a huge fan of Calm and have found that it helps to keep my mind from spinning on the small stuff.
But also, before being quick to label someone else as rude, stop and think about the alternative perspectives at play. Don’t assume that someone is doing something because they are trying to be rude. Sympathize. Maybe they are having a really shitty day and they’ve been bitten by the rudeness bug by someone else and need someone to show them some kindness so they don’t spread the disease further. Maybe they have their blinders on and are stuck in an us-vs-them loop and need a friendly nudge that strangers have feelings too.
There is no avoiding rudeness. There will always be rudeness in the world because we will never have universal alignment on what is and what isn’t considered rude. So let’s instead focus on good intentions and practicing empathy. And maybe just as important, forgiving ourselves when we slip up and spew rudeness out into the world. Nobody’s perfect.
