I read this Reader's Digest article, "How polite are we?", in the morning and by night all the networks are covering it as big news.
According to this Survey, Mumbai is rated as world's rudest city and New York is rated as world's most polite city. What's wrong with this picture?
I was surprised to see the criteria used to determine the being rude vs. being polite.
1. "Dropping papers in a busy street to see if anyone would help"
Cannot comment much on this, because I never been to Mumbai. However, this partly shows being people as busy, not rude.
2. "Checking how often shop assistants said “thank you”"
This, I have problem with. In country like India forget about busy city like Mumbai, even rural town shop assistant would not say "thank you". But, that's most definitely not because he/she was being rude. It's because ordinary people in India are simply not used to saying such pleasantries.
3. "Counting how often someone held a door open"
This is another area where the survey picked a wrong case to observe to analyze rudeness. Again, most of the ordinary people in India are not simply used to 'holding the door open for someone that's coming behind them'. People just do not such thing as being rude. I will give you an example.
For years I have been working and living in NY/NJ/PA tri-state area. Every time someone sneezes, most of them (including myself) say 'bless you' (short for 'may god bless you'). Some may choose to say it, some don't say it. I worked in Maryland for six months, there I observed my colleagues and not even once they said 'bless you'. I do not think they are any more impolite than the New Yorkers.
I think this survey is severely flawed!
1 comment:
I think that it is all relatively speaking of course.
I am sure that they didn't conduct a survey in Islamabad :)
Even though I agree with the survey's general idea, I think saying New York is more congenial is more appropriate than saying that Mumbai is ruder.
I do think that ordinary people aren't used to such niceties - but does that make it any less ruder?
I am not saying that the survey was entirely objective - but I think saying thank you, picking up papers when someone else drops them seem to be the least people can do to be civil.
In India, people aren't used to saying "bless you" - so I can agree with you on that, but I am not so generous with the other social proprieties.
In the end, people in America - say Hi to strangers, bring up idle talk, and exchange pleasantries - that definitely makes it more congenial than Mumbai.
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