JetBlue case: The lost art of simple courtesy – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com

Another great column from Leonard Pitts….

The public is a bunch of rude, obnoxious jerks.

OK, so I overstate. A little. Yes, there are exceptions. I’m not such a bad guy and you, of course, are a paragon of civility. But the rest of them? A cavalcade of boors, boobs, bums, bozos, and troglodytes.

So it is small wonder the tale of Steven Slater has hit a nerve. The precise sequence of events is still being sorted out at this writing. The initial story was that Slater, a flight attendant for JetBlue, got into it with a woman who cursed him when he asked her not to stand up to retrieve her bags while the plane was still taxiing. At some point, Slater was apparently hit in the head; his attorney says the woman slammed the storage bin on him.

This much is certain: Slater went on the plane’s public address system and, as quoted by one witness, declared, “To the passenger who just called me a motherf———-, f—— you. I’ve been in this business 28 years and I’ve had it.” He then grabbed himself a beer from a service cart, deployed the plane’s evacuation slide, slid down to the tarmac and drove home. He was arrested shortly after.

To concede the obvious: Yes, it was a dumb stunt. He’s lucky no one on the ground was injured by the slide.

But still … it resonates, doesn’t it?

Some people are framing what happened as a cautionary tale of workplace stress. It seems to me, though, that the episode speaks more pointedly to something larger: the growing incivility of all our daily lives.

If the initial account stands up, we’re talking about the incivility of the passenger. If an alternate account turns out to be true — some passengers say Slater ignited the confrontation with his own brusque behavior — we might find guilt on both sides.

But either version vindicates a belief that simple courtesy has become a lost art. I’m reminded of how, when we kids would ask my mom for something, she would prompt us: “What’s the magic word?” The magic word was please. And when you’d received what you’d asked for, there was another magic word: thank you.

In the olden days, we thought manners mattered. Apparently we no longer do. And while that observation can’t be quantified, it is one many of us share. A number of surveys, including one from Rasmussen Reports in 2009, find that an overwhelming majority of us (75 percent, according to Rasmussen) think Americans are becoming ruder.

Link to full Column: JetBlue case: The lost art of simple courtesy – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.