Manners are free in Daily Thoughts, Ideas, and Experiences

I think it’s very important to be polite. It’s not hard, it doesn’t cost anything, and it reaps benefits. It’s kinda funny, my mom is a lovely kind woman but sometimes she sounds short when she makes casual interactions. Somehow I’ve learned to be very polite, arguably too much at times. I try not to rush through things so I don’t mind spending some extra time letting someone walk in front of me, holding a door, or apologizing to someone.
Sometimes I interact with someone who is just so casually rude and it actually makes me angry. I don’t need everyone to be all sweet all the time but when someone always seems to just be pissed off it really irks me.
This girl who works at the store next to mine bothers me so. She comes by pretty often and I try to be nice. I go above and beyond when it comes to helping other people who work in the mall because I understand them. We have a sense of solidarity. But she always seems so distant and defensive. Which is fine, I won’t bother you or ask any questions if you don’t want to do all that. I don’t care to be your friend, I just figure that if I see you several times a week we can at least be nice to one another.
The first thing that really bothered me it when she came up just looking at her phone and made an order without even looking at me. I grabbed her food and put down where she could see it and she finally looked at me to ask for “one that wasn’t burnt.” I gestured to the food in the warmer and asked her if there was another one she wanted and she just cursed that they were all burnt and stormed off. I don’t mind people swearing, it shows some ounce of vulnerability and equality but she was just being rude. And the food wasn’t even burnt, but if it wasn’t to her standard she could have actually looked up from her phone for a second and decided that before I walked up to help her. It bothered me but I tried to think that maybe she was having a rough day.
I have this thing where I want people to like me. So I’ve tried to put myself in a positive light in her mind. She came up and asked for water. Now we offer a small cup of water for free but charge for a medium or large. But I told her I could give her a medium for free. I was being nice. My boss actually commented on it later. I went that extra mile and got scolded for it. She’s come since then and got things with her water and sometimes she’s been charged for the water and other times she gets it for free. I know this, I see the receipts.
But today she walked up and asked for her water and my coworker rang her up for it. She looked up from her phone and insisted that she’d never been charged for water before. My coworker looked up at me and asked if we charged for the medium and I told her loud enough for this girl to hear “we’re supposed to but she’s okay.” And I told her directly that if my boss is around that she’d be charged. And she didn’t even look at me to say “No he’s given it to me for free too.” It really kicks too because she could bring her own water or maybe use the water fountain. Or even walk a little bit and go to a place that actually gives any size water for free. I see her coworkers do that. Now she knows I’ve broken the rules for her and she is still so defensive.
So now what to do? I really want to ask one of my more…tough coworkers to say something. To tell her that my boss is cracking down on the rules or someone got in trouble. That she can go somewhere else. That she can learn to be kind to people she chooses to interact with. If she’s not happy to come to us then she can change that.
Anyhow maybe I’ll teach some etiquette classes or something. It’s not helpful that I’m being overly agreeable but I still have hope that maybe she’ll hop off whatever nonsense that she’s on and turn over a moral leaf.
I’m not so critical of people. It’s just that I don’t know her and from every interaction I’ve had with her I’ve taken away more negativity. When that’s all you get it’s easy to dislike someone.