“Oh, that’s so rude!”
If you find yourself saying that a lot and can name off the top of your head at least 20 things that drive you nuts, you must be of my generation.
We, our generation, says Lynne Truss in her book “Talk to the Hand” (“Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” is also by her), tend to set ourselves apart from the young ’uns who “spend less time defining themselves by things they don’t like.”
Me—I know exactly my side of the generational divide. If you say “Pasensiya na po” when you ought to be saying “I’m sorry,” you definitely belong in another era.
Speaking of rudeness, it’s one phrase I’ve developed a mania for. It’s bad enough that the wrongdoer is not properly sorry, but to yet add insult to injury by expecting patience from the injured: Okay, okay, so you’ve been wronged, but where is your heart?
In fact, only recently, I precisely felt that way at a grocery store that had won me over for its wide-range stocks and cheap prices and a P10,000 prize won in a raffle. I observed they had raised not only their prices, but also the amount of purchase that entitled a customer to a raffle ticket, from P2,000 to P3,000. But for consolation, I suppose, they gave 80 grams of sliced ham for every P2,000 purchase.
With a receipt for P6,000, I marched off to collect my two raffle tickets and 240 grams of ham, only to find out from customers in line that the ham girl had taken a break. I called the manager to complain and got me an earful of “Pasensiya na po.”
Fifteen minutes later, the ham-promotion girl is back, and what do you think spilled out of her crimson lips? “Pasensiya na po.”
When my turn came, I was put to a further test of patience. For all my purchases, I only deserved 80 grams because I did not have the uncommon sense to get three receipts of P2,000 each. “Ma’am one receipt, one pack. Pasensiya na po.”
Looking at my prize, I didn’t feel so bad; I could swear it was luncheon meat masquerading as ham. In fact I thought my luck had finally turned when I was told I could claim three slices of pizza for the same purchases. As you may have guessed, I got only one slice of pizza and an overload of pasensiya.
Desperate service
Sometimes there’s just no choice but to be patient. I called for desperate service from the company where we had bought our living-room air-conditioner, a power-saving split-type inverter; it had conked out in this season’s particularly oppressive heat. The soonest they could come was in a week.
The voice, the third to come to the phone, a supervisor, peppered her reply with the hateful phrase. She began with it, dropped it again in the middle, and ended with it: “P—… Five service teams could not cope for Makati alone. P—… The heat must be driving everybody to overuse. P—…”
My tolerance for inappropriate behavior is at about its lowest when I’m at a dressed-up luncheon and, in the absence of under-the-table hooks or extra chairs, handbags are set around the center of the table, crowding out the floral centerpieces and blocking views. Never mind small, delicate evening purses, but not daytime bags, however expensive!
The ultimate is when the centerpieces are taken home with the bags. The getaway is well executed. While everybody is distracted by the long good byes, someone, usually in a nurse uniform, picks up the centerpiece and passes it to a uniformed driver who quickly disappears with it into the car.
If it’s too heavy, the flowers are yanked out from the arrangement, leaving a sorry sight even before the party is over. I could go on and on. Such tacky behavior is inexcusable and inconsiderate to the hostess, but not without its rationale: “It will just go to waste anyway.”
Ideal of empathy
Again, Lynne Truss reminds us: “Manners are based on an ideal of empathy, of imagining the impact of one’s own actions on others. They involve doing something for the sake of other people that is not obligatory and attracts no reward. In the current climate of unrestrained solipsistic and aggressive self-interest, you can equate good manners not only with virtue but with positive heroism.”
It’s sad but true: Good manners do require some measure of heroism these days. Already there’s a shortage of heroes of any kind. One of my balae, observing the current political situation, notes, “All our heroes died in World War II.”
But down to looking for heroism in good manners, we see that there have been survivors from the war, my own grandfather among them.
Lolo Rafael was a true gentleman of the old school. Without his living example, I would not have been so presumptuous as to write on social graces for one magazine. Indeed, I had a tutor by example in a grandfather who defined “educacion” simply as consideration for others.
That way, anyone, rich or poor, schooled or unschooled, could claim the virtue in any of life’s situations—without having to beg for anyone’s patience.