Don't leave your manners at home when you travel.
I just had a lovely week in Seattle, and witnessed a few breaches of etiquette. Ahem:
1) Airline passengers littering the seats, floor, and everything in their radius with their detritus.
I realize that we're all mad at the airlines these days, but leaving a mess in your spot is: a) gross, b) disrespectful , and c) it looks disgusting. As I passed the vacated seats and saw black things (I have no idea what they were-- wrappers? food?) all over the floor and seats, along with various wrappers, crumbs, cheerios, water bottles, etc., all I could envision was the trashy people sitting in those seats. Yecch.
Keep it tidy, folks. You don't want others thinking you're trash, or the flight attendants calling you trash, now do you?
2) A nearly-screwed-then-helped passenger who couldn't say "thank you."
Waiting in security, a befuddled Auntie approached the guy who checks your ID, and proclaimed, "I've lost my driver's license!" An airport employee in uniform heard her, reached over and handed her her license; apparently, she dropped it on the floor. "Thanks," she said to the Airport Guy. "Don't thank me," he said, "thank this guy (points to regular man standing in TSA line). He's the one who found it and turned it in."
Regular guy waves at Auntie.
"Oh," she says.
Uh, jerko, the appropriate response here is: "Thank you, kind sir!" Hell, you don't even need the "kind sir." A simple "thanks" to the man who turned in your license, that thing without which you would be fucked, would do. Nope, she didn't say a word, just, "Oh."
When someone does something nice for you, fucking thank them.
And the rudest thing that happened on vacation:
Asshole Businessman Taking Up the Entire Business Center who popped off after I asked, "Excuse me, sir, do you have any idea how long you'll be on?" He bitched back with, "Uh, yeah, til I'm done," then proceeded to ask bitchy, sarcastic questions like, "Why, did I just ruin your week?" Bitchyman then told my husband to "control me," (ha! like you can control the Etiquette Bitch!), told me I was rude for asking how long he would use the computer (ha!) and then threatened my husband with bodily harm.
We left the hotel for much sweeter confines.
People, when staying at a hotel, since hotels these days provide 1 computer for about 200 people, it's not uncommon for someone to say, "Excuse me, do you have any idea how long you'll be?" Guess what -- it's not rude for them to ask. They're being courteous, and, probably like me, they're thinking they'll go do something else for an hour and leave you alone.
