The Vine: August 25, 2010
Dear Sars,
I am writing because I find myself increasingly…angry. I live in London and have done so for almost ten years. Because of my family situation, I won’t be leaving the city any time soon.
I find that the little things about urban living are getting to me. Drivers who honk at me because I’m not driving fast enough for them (I drive just over the speed limit, and have been caught by a speed camera for going 37 in a 30 zone — it’s really easy to get caught speeding here). Cyclists who speed through crossings where pedestrians have the right of way, knocking old ladies (and, once, me) to the ground. Taxi drivers who hear my accent and disregard my perfectly clear instructions on which route to take.
I guess I just feel like the basic rules of interacting in society are being eroded, and it’s really getting to me. These don’t tend to be situations where you can calmly speak your mind, they tend to be situations that happen very quickly and then the person is gone. Sometimes I yell at the people who do these things, but that just ends up making me feel worse. But if I don’t say anything, I feel like they…win, somehow? You’ve lived in a major city for a long time now — how do you avoid letting this kind of thing get to you?
Bikes are supposed to stop at zebra crossings, you know
Dear Bike,
I’d like to tell you that I have a trick for letting these things go, but I don’t. I agree that it seems as though the world has gotten less considerate in the last few years, and I have a theory about that relating to smart phones, texting, etc., and the way portable devices isolate users from the concept of sharing spaces courteously, but theories don’t do much in the day-to-day.
Two things do help me somewhat. The first is getting out of the city now and then. All the rudeness and cluelessness has a cumulative effect, at least for me, and it helps to go to my parents’ house, or up to the Cape, or wherever, even for an overnight, and get away from it. You don’t have to go far, or stay over; just break your routine somehow. Take a different route to work. Find a green space in the city and chill there for an hour after work — read a book, catnap on a blanket, whatever. I like to go to Floyd Bennett Field periodically and walk around or watch the remote-control-car races; it’s like a reset, and it’s right there in the city.
I also like to go to my hometown, where everything is shuttered and dark by 10 PM, to remind myself that the quiet suburban life is wonderful…and utterly not for me. So, just change things up a bit for a day or two.
My other trick, which is ridiculous and should not work but does for some reason, is positive affirmations of other people. I started doing it in a horrendo traffic jam on Staten Island once — cheerily waving and thumbs-upping fellow drivers who allowed me to merge; complimenting everyone else on the road on their patience and reminding them that we had to work together; informing a toadstool who cut me off that I knew he had many fine qualities and probably looked great in that shirt, and I totally did not hope he stepped in poo and then tracked it into his Escalade. Then I made up a song about the Pooscalade and sang it loudly. I know: weirdballs, but anyone who’s tried to get over the Goethals on a summer Sunday feels me. Nobody could hear me, and it began as a kind of a joke — “You gained half a car length squeezing out a Smart! Well done, Inahurry O’Gasguzzler!” — and maybe that’s why it works, but I had gotten so tired of actively hating other drivers and wanting to jam bees into everyone’s transmissions that I had to try something else, or I was going to have a heart attack.
The hard part is that you know you shouldn’t take it personally, but then you take that personally — “How can nobody be paying attention?!” Turning it around and trying to make it personal with a friendly attitude, even if it feels (and is) fake, somehow has the effect of negating those feelings that everyone in the city is actively ignoring your comfort.
Living in a city, on top of everyone else who lives there, is tough. Give yourself a day off, literally if you can — and switch up your mood with something dumb like Compulsive Waving Family: UK Edition.
So, I sit about eight feet away from a co-worker who chews gum. Big, huge hunks of sticky gum…loudly. And with a visibly open mouth, so that all the wet, slappy, spitty mouth noises (as well as the cracking and bubble-popping) float into my ears…all throughout the day (when she’s not eating various snacks, like peanuts, which, oddly enough, present the same problem — minus, of course, the bubbles). Why, I don’t know, as it seems more difficult to chew that way than it would be to…NOT.
This is flat-out gross. It is disgusting to listen to this smacky, moist, squishy sound all day (and gum in general — the idea of it at all — just makes me queasy). My problem is, when headphones are not an option…what then? I have found in the past that you can ask people to, say, turn down their music or even turn off a cell phone, but this is taken as an insult, as if you’re insinuating that someone is devoid of manners and social skills.
I would not like this to be the case. My co-worker is otherwise awesome. We have traveled together, and have our stupid inside jokes, and can often guess what the other is thinking when a random expletive is unleashed. Yet, she’s not close enough that I’d have no problem saying, “Cut that shit out!” like I would to a longtime friend. On the other hand, she is far from a stranger to whom I might (but probably not) say, “Excuse me, but could you…?” Every time I hear a crack, pop, or chew sound, I feel…rage!
How do you tell an adult to chew with her damn mouth shut without sounding like a total jerk?
Dear Mouth,
“Excuse me — I’m so sorry, but the gum-popping is making it kind of hard for me to concentrate. It’s just a thing I have, so…would you mind chewing silently until I’m done with [x]? Thanks so much, I really appreciate it.”
You’ll have to do it a few times. Eventually, you may reach a shorthand for it if she’s someone you generally feel comfortable with: “Uch, effing spreadsheet. …Gum? Great, thanks.”
A lot of people 1) chew the hell out of their gum, and 2) don’t realize how much noise it makes (and how gross that noise is) when they do so. Start by asking occasionally that she knock it off, and if that’s going okay, start asking more often (or wait for her to figure out based on when/how often you ask that it’s not that awesome for her to make squirgly noises with her snack substitute).
To everyone else: if it’s an otherwise quiet environment, gum stays in mouth, mouth stays closed.
Tags: city living etiquette
Bike: I can’t believe that I’m living my life according to advice I saw on Twitter, much less advice is from ‘Shit My Dad Says,’ but…this one is a good way to summarize my take on things:
“Don’t focus on the one guy who hates you. You don’t go to the park and set your picnic down next to the only pile of dog shit.”
If something happens that is truly offensive or dangerous, and you can make an impact by speaking up, then absolutely do so. But ignore the little stuff, and focus on the positive. (And when the jerks are out, there’s usually another quietly-suffering soul nearby that you can share an eyeroll/’can you believe this jackass’ look – solidarity, baby!)
Focus more on the flowers (the person who opens the door for you, the social/cultural/career advantages to living in the city), rather than on the dog shit.
I had an experience in a grocery store parking lot that really served as a wake-up call for my anger over little slights from other people. I had made the colossal mistake of going grocery shopping on a Sunday afternoon, which is essentially asking to be bombarded with people being thoughtless, self-absorbed yahoos. When I got back to my car, I saw a woman a few cars away stick her cart by the curb next to her car. For some reason, it just sent me over the edge – we were maybe 4 parking spots away from a cart return. She got in her car and started it up as I huffed over, grabbed her cart, and stomped it back to the return. She pulled up next to me and called out “ma’am, you don’t have to get so mad.” I tried to brush her off, but she blocked my path with her car and, with tears in her eyes, told me she was undergoing chemo and just didn’t have the energy to do anything else with her cart. Looking closer, I could see she was wearing a wig and had the pallor and visible fatigue of someone who was, in fact, undergoing chemo. I have never felt so ashamed of myself. I apologized profusely and wished her good health.
I had tried the you-don’t-know-their-backstory approach before, but it didn’t really hit home for me until I actually acted like a complete jackass toward someone who *did* have a non-jerky explanation for doing something I didn’t like. It really took me down a few necessary notches. When I get into a angry fugue over stupid traffic crap, I think of her and calm down. Seriously, that woman gave me a little piece of perspective that changed me. I hope she’s doing okay.
Bria, thank you for this.
@Nicole/Mouth – Hand to God, your letter could’ve been mine. I, too, have a coworker-slash-friend-slash-former-friend who chews with her mouth open. (Note: We’re former friends for non-mastication reasons.) For her, it’s a cultural thing. That is to say certain Western societal expectations like chewing with your mouth closed, refraining from talking with your mouth full, et cetera aren’t necessarily of paramount importance where she comes from. She’s been told in the past about her open-mouthery, and she just shrugs it off and says, “I don’t get why it’s a big deal.” Anyway, I totally get how you feel awkward broaching the subject with her. Here’s my suggestion: Try one of those anonymous email websites like Private Critic, Bitchogram (heh), or Annoying Coworker. Additionally, you can create an anonymous email account of your own through Gmail or Yahoo! (though that might incite a reply email from her and maybe you don’t want to see that). Here’s hoping quieter work days are ahead of you.
Jill TX, I honestly think you just changed my life. I went to the “Highly Sensitive Person” website, and had this flash of recognition. 24/27 on the self-test, and that’s holding back in an attempt not to overly identify like people do with psychic readings. Sometimes afterwards I think “I’m just being weak, normal people don’t act this way.” Oh thank God.
Sarah, so glad to hear it! That’s how I felt, too.
Well, you know what they say Bike. Don’t sweat the petty stuff and don’t pet the sweaty stuff.
I think I’m one of the few that still embraces thinking mean things at the jerks on the highway :D I had to stop yelling four-letter-words at them, though, or I was going to give myself a coronary one day soon. So, I think up small but irritating things: “I hope you’re late to your meeting;” “I hope that you have a project due today, but the person you need information from took a hooky day;” “I hope you come home to find your kids hopped up on Pixie Sticks;” “I hope you discover you shrunk your jeans in the wash.” Small, non-harmful, highly irritating… and they make me be creative on the spot, which actually reduces a large bit of my anger. Less room for anger when I’m trying to enforce my creativity :)
Re @Carrie Ann’s “loose puppy” mental imagery:
I have been known to cry out at stupid drivers, “KItty! Get away from your daddy’s feet! You’re going to cause him to have a wreck! Kitty! KITTEH!” I do this not only because it happened to me once when He Who Must Be Fed finagled open the door of his carrier (never again!) and I empathize with the potential for carnage, but because it also makes me die laughing at the mental image of Frantic the Cat trying to push all the pedals and steer while Daddy the Idiot is flailing around trying to catch him. Result: Road rage dialed down into humor or sympathy, depending.
Whether I have sometimes yelled, “Kitty! Drive him into the ditch! Quick! Then jump out the window and come home with me! Yay!” is nunyabidness.
Tailgating, however, is my complete twitching downfall. (I’ve had two cars knocked out from under me by #@$%! tailgaters.) A friend of mine has threatened to make me a bumpersticker that says, “Dear Tailgater: One more time and I throw it in reverse and floor it,” but with the intelligence level of some of the mouth-breathers ’round here, I fear they’d think it was a proposition or something.
Bike, I don’t think anyone else has suggested this yet, but you might want to consider getting a massage once in a while. A good massage really can help you let go of a lot of stress, like getting out of the city for the weekend, but faster.
Jill TX, that sounds A LOT like me. My cubicle-mate’s typing drives me crazy but it’s not like I can ask her to stop typing because…it’s kind of a requirement for secretaries, you know? Then there’s random gum chewing, whistling (not necessarily from her), etc.
This explains why sometimes, even just hearing other people’s voices hurts my ears.