Are You Rude?

Are You Rude?

Your first response will be, “No, of course not!”

We don’t like to think of ourselves that way. But a quick glimpse of the national news, or even a scan of our neighborhood listserv, suggests that many people are indeed shockingly rude.

What determines rudeness is, however, subjective. Rudeness and politeness were first defined by local standards, until the recent explosion of the global monoculture. But some of the traditional differences between cultures persist today. For instance, standing on a train platform in a northern European country – the Netherlands, or Denmark, for example – strangers will keep their distance, barely make eye-contact, and will most definitely not flash you a huge grin. Small talk won’t happen either.  Gregarious Americans may interpret this social reserve and silence as rude. It’s ironic, since traditional etiquette in those places perceives casual chumminess as intrusive, inappropriate—in other words, rude.

Personal, physical space is another area where standards vary. Social anthropologists observe that warm-weather cultures easily tolerate more casual physical contact than those in chillier climes. How close you stand to someone else on an elevator, or whether you touch their shoulder or arm while talking, may be influenced by how your specific cultural context defines personal space. By contrast to say, Copenhagen, when you wander through a Mexican zocaloor a souk in Morocco, there’s lots of accidental jostling and grazing body-contact as shoppers bustle down the narrow lanes and alleys, and no one protests.  Another example: stereotypically, (pre-COVID) people of Latin cultures, even the haughtiest of Parisians, hug and triple-kiss quite casually in greeting and parting. 

In the business world, we’re often rude in many ways, perhaps unconsciously. Yes, using the office microwave to nuke your horrifically aromatic Brussel sprouts qualifies as rude. But interrupting while others speak takes top honors. Interruption may take many forms, starting with butting in verbally. We also interrupt with body language, by inserting distractions, whispering asides to neighbors, and of course by reading and texting while someone has the floor. It’s so common that the priceless response from our Vice President Kamala Harris has been immortalized as a meme: “Excuse me, I’m speaking.” 

Here's a tiny rudeness that gets under my skin: when a query is made in writing, as in email or text, and the answer is “No,” some people simply don’t reply. At all.  Ever. Not even an emoticon.  This seems the height of dismissiveness, as though the question is unworthy of even the most basic answer. What’s up with that?

My business communications work in group dynamics has my attention focused on how we define rude behavior these days. I’m curious – what do you observe at work that strikes you as rude?

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