The great politeness experiment
Generally, I don't pay attention to the people around me (meaning other customers in stores, etc), but in light of all my Southern friends' assertations that Southerners really are more polite (or, as spautz puts it, have a lower rudeness threshhold). So for the next week or so (as long as it takes me to get bored with this), I will be paying attention to how other peoople interact.
Today's first test was Collegetown Bagel, since I slept too late to make oatmeal for breakfast. Collegetown Bagel is a combined coffee shop/deli/bagel shop whose setup is not particularly conducive to being polite. You follow a queue up to a counter, where you order the sandwiches/bagels you want and receive a slip of paper to take farther up the queue to the cashier. It's generally loud, and there are several employees making sandwiches and taking orders at the same time. So you just stand there until someone looks up or, ideally, asks you what you want. They're working really hard and trying to keep up with roughly five sandwiches each, plus new customers, so it's hard to say they're impolite.
I was able to hear two people both in front of and behind me for a total of four. The shop is just outside Cornell's campus, so there's no real telling where the customers are from, though it seems the vast majority of Cornell students are originally from the North. Here are the results from ordering the bagels:
Next I reached the cashier. You don't have to ask the cashier for anything, except perhaps a coffee. But I was the only one in my area who wanted a coffee, and I am excluding myself from this experiment. Once again, everyone around me said "Thanks" or "Thank you" when his order was completed. Later, when receiving my sandwich (you wait around to hear "sesame with cream cheese!"), I noticed that about half the people said thank you, and that when they had to reach over someone waiting in line, almost all said excuse me.
So that's all I know for now. Time to learn some solid mechanics.
May 4, 2005
Today I noticed that all the kids thanked our bus driver when we got off the shuttle from my apartment to campus this morning.
I spoke with the Yankees who sit around me about politeness in the South. One of them is from New York, and the other is from New Jersey. They're both really nice and have even invited me to parties. So anyhow, they said they don't feel welcome in the South. They feel intimidated by a high prevalence of bumper stickers that either have the Confederate flag or say things like "Yankees, go home!" They think Carolinians have too much pride. They also talked at length about a friend of theirs who went to Texas for grad school and has been having terrible service everywhere and who hasn't been able to make friends. Weird...
May 9, 2005
This is from a thread on the Runner's World Forums about the best greetings received while out on a run:
Today's first test was Collegetown Bagel, since I slept too late to make oatmeal for breakfast. Collegetown Bagel is a combined coffee shop/deli/bagel shop whose setup is not particularly conducive to being polite. You follow a queue up to a counter, where you order the sandwiches/bagels you want and receive a slip of paper to take farther up the queue to the cashier. It's generally loud, and there are several employees making sandwiches and taking orders at the same time. So you just stand there until someone looks up or, ideally, asks you what you want. They're working really hard and trying to keep up with roughly five sandwiches each, plus new customers, so it's hard to say they're impolite.
I was able to hear two people both in front of and behind me for a total of four. The shop is just outside Cornell's campus, so there's no real telling where the customers are from, though it seems the vast majority of Cornell students are originally from the North. Here are the results from ordering the bagels:
- Two people said "Can I get a ..."
- One said "I'll have a ..., please"
- One said "I'd like a ..."
- All four said either "Thanks" or "Thank you" upon receiving their order slip
Next I reached the cashier. You don't have to ask the cashier for anything, except perhaps a coffee. But I was the only one in my area who wanted a coffee, and I am excluding myself from this experiment. Once again, everyone around me said "Thanks" or "Thank you" when his order was completed. Later, when receiving my sandwich (you wait around to hear "sesame with cream cheese!"), I noticed that about half the people said thank you, and that when they had to reach over someone waiting in line, almost all said excuse me.
So that's all I know for now. Time to learn some solid mechanics.
May 4, 2005
Today I noticed that all the kids thanked our bus driver when we got off the shuttle from my apartment to campus this morning.
I spoke with the Yankees who sit around me about politeness in the South. One of them is from New York, and the other is from New Jersey. They're both really nice and have even invited me to parties. So anyhow, they said they don't feel welcome in the South. They feel intimidated by a high prevalence of bumper stickers that either have the Confederate flag or say things like "Yankees, go home!" They think Carolinians have too much pride. They also talked at length about a friend of theirs who went to Texas for grad school and has been having terrible service everywhere and who hasn't been able to make friends. Weird...
May 9, 2005
This is from a thread on the Runner's World Forums about the best greetings received while out on a run:
I used to just say "mornin'" if it was morning. But, though that is appropriate for someone from the northeast, the southerners didn't seem to like it. After people remarking that yes, it was morning, I've added a "good" to it!
posted by megan at
10:59 AM
2 Comments:
By my very rough estimates, about half of the undergraduate students at Cornell are from New York state. There's pretty good coverage of the state; in my class, I had a lot from the city and plenty from upstate. Graduate students are mostly not from New York state. Professors are of course originally from all over the place, though many are long-time residents. Townies also come from damn near everywhere, but most of them aren't in CTB.
However, Ithaca is a nice town. It's also not representative of the area. A lot of people here are originally from various other places. We're a fairly liberal town in the middle of a conservative region in a fairly liberal state. We have a very low crime rate compared to similar towns. The population is younger than most areas. You can guess from the sorts of events we have that townies care about their community and tend on the well-educated side. The university folk are usually either well-educated or fairly wealthy (the latter being about half of the undergraduates).
As a completely useless anecdote, the level of civility here, which is admittedly an atypical town but still certainly "in the North", is much better than that found at Paramount's Carowinds theme park in North/South Carolina.
By
Anonymous, at 3:09 PM
This is all true, so I guess the experiment won't really find correlations between Yankees and politeness levels unless I spend a lot of time traveling. On the other hand, I think I'll continue it in order to figure out what I consider "polite," and what I consider "rude."
Today my mom was telling me how nice and caring the people of Massachusetts were (we lived in the small town of Longmeadow during my "formative" years). I know a fair number of Southerners who think Massachusettsians are deplorable (though some have never been to Massachusetts, which I find, to say the least, eyebrow-lifting).
I reject the opinion that Northerners are just more selfish. So I think there is just a different opinion of what's nice and what's polite. Maybe by conducting this little experiment, others will come to understand my viewpoints better, and thus why I am so defensive.
I've never really felt I fit in with a geographical group before. I lived in the South most of my life (since age four), but there isn't a Southerner out there who would call me a Southerner. On the other hand, I don't remember living in the North, so it feels odd to call myself a Yankee or a Midwesterner (which I am by birth). I do know that the people of Ithaca do not hear a Southern accent in my voice and do not ask me where I'm from originally. If I happen to mention that I'm from SC, they tend to say "Really? I thought you were from Pennsylvania or Ohio."
By
megan, at 6:00 PM
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