Dear Etiquette Hell,
I am a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit of a large metropolitan hospital. We are not usually permitted to leave our allocated patient as they are usually too ill or have too many machines that need monitoring. So everyone who wants one can have a flu shot, the occupational health nurse comes around our ward with her trolley and gives us the shot right there so we don’t have to go downstairs to her office. I always want to have it as we are often exposed to the flu, especially from overseas people who end up in hospital.
So this year I had my shot as always, signed the consent form and got my lollipop (hey there has to be some perks!). I had a quick chat with the nurse and she was on her way. Now this day I was looking after an elderly man with multiple problems who had been in hospital for about two weeks. I had been talking with his daughter and she seemed quite nice.
However, after she saw me have the flu shot, she immediately asked why I had injected my body with poisons and didn’t I know those shots were filled with heavy metals? I simply said that I felt that it protected me from a dangerous and potentially lethal disease (the latest round of swine flu here killed two patients on our unit who were the same age as me). She then proceeded to go on a rant about how all western medicines were useless and how vaccines were giving children autism and diabetes. I assume she meant the journal article published in ‘The Lancet’ which was later retracted after the author was found to have falsified his results and the study was not valid in any way.
Even if your belief is that vaccines are poisonous, you should keep your opinion to yourself. As an adult I have the right to make choices about my health and my life. I don’t know what her answer would have been if I had said that I was going to get drunk that evening, because as an adult I can do that and it has been proven to be bad for your health, whereas I believe vaccines are effective and save lives. I also wonder if she hated ‘western’ medicine so much, why did she think it was ok for her father to be in the hospital? 0902-11
Category: Just Plain Tacky
Pajamas And Low Rise Jeans
Allow me to vent…
This past holiday weekend I had the pleasure to stay at a family resort, and the amount of people wearing pajamas in public places was mortifying . The hotel lobby is not your living room. The coffee shop is not your bedroom. It literally takes two seconds to put on pants and shoes and take off that robe.
Rant over…. 1124-18
I’d rather see people in pajamas than wearing their bluejeans so low on the hips that nothing is left to the imagination.
We’re Flying The Friendly Skies Again!
I flew yesterday, which was the day after you posted the story about the screaming child on the plane. Luckily no kids screamed but I did see rudeness unlike anything I have ever seen.
A lady in her sixties was traveling with her elderly mom. The mom was given pre-boarding status and taken on plane in a wheelchair. The mom had the middle seat and the daughter had the aisle. I boarded in group three and was across from them, so I was able to see/hear the whole conversation that occurred when the lady who had the window seat tried to get into her seat.
The daughter did not want to let the lady in. She was livid that her mom was going to be disturbed. The lady trying to enter the row kept apologizing and saying she wish she didn’t have to do it, but that was her seat and they had been announcing it was a full flight so there was no where to move to and they were going to need to let her in. She stayed very nice, calm and sympathetic the entire time. If it had been me, I would have pointed out that what did she expect to happen when you pre-board and if it was really that big a deal then the daughter should have taken the window seat to ensure this didn’t happen.
The daughter and her mom finally got up so the lady could get in to her seat. At which point the daughter very rudely told the lady to pay attention to their stuff and not step on anything.
When the flight ended, I walked off the plane behind them, as they apparently hadn’t ordered a wheelchair for the end. Which is why they stole someone else’s wheelchair when we reached the ramp. And when the attendant tried to tell the mom to get out the daughter said no and blocked everyone else from moving till the guy relented and called for another wheelchair for the person now stuck on the plane.
But hey, no kids screamed. 1005-18
Holding Up TWO Check Out Lines At The Same Time
I was at Walmart to pick up a few things, and got in line at the express checkout (this has a 20 item limit). In front of me is a woman. Across the aisle, in the other express line is her husband, with another cart. Both carts had an appropriate number of items for the express lane, and each has one customer ahead of them, and one behind (including me).
A minute after I get in line, the wife realizes she has to go to customer service, takes her purse and leaves. Husband pushes her cart up and unloads it onto the belt, leaving his cart in place. While her cashier is scanning, his cashier finishes with the customer ahead of him and looks around, puzzled. More customers appear in each line. Husband realizes he’s holding things up, and still standing at her register, tells the person behind his cart to go ahead. I don’t think the other customer heard him. He eventually steps across the aisle to wave the guy ahead. He pays for her groceries and moves her cart up so I can unload. Then he goes over to unload and pay for his items.
My instinct is to move wife’s cart aside and let her line go forward while she was absent, then she will rejoin the line once she has returned. Husbands actions delayed each line, his more than hers. Was he rude? Are there other solutions? Thanks! 0102-18
I believe the polite thing to have done was that the wife exit from the line altogether and rejoin it when she is capable of overseeing the transaction. Her husband should have pulled the cart from the line as a courtesy to shoppers behind his wife’s cart.
Do You Speak English?
Reading through your ‘Travel” section of the archives reminded me of how my own dear family decided to act on a European vacation we went on!
The vacation was to be a week-long cruise starting in Barcelona and going to parts of Italy and France with my mother’s family – Gramma, Aunt Carol, Aunt Lisa, and her son Bob who was two years older than I, as well as my younger brother, mom, and dad. Since my mother and father met during an exchange program in Austria, Dad decided that we four would spend an extra week in southern Germany and Austria before heading to Barcelona. I had been taking German classes for four years at this point, my brother had just started a German class, and my dad majored in German, so I was quite excited for that portion.
To prepare, I did some research on how Americans should conduct themselves overseas to avoid being “rude Americans” or standing out as targets for pickpockets or thieves. Suggestions I found included learning some basic phrases and names of food you like, and dressing a little fancier – no athletic gear worn as normal clothes, no white socks with shorts and sneakers, no backpacks or fanny packs, no cameras worn on the neck, no baseball caps, dark wash jeans, and no chewing gum or being loud. Since Dad was being very paranoid about having money or phones stolen, I relayed the suggestions to him and printed out some basic food phrases in the various language, as well as phrases like “Don’t touch me,” and “No thank you” in case we were approached by shady characters (we were taking public transportation at times and Dad was rife with horror stories about them).
The German part of our trip went off relatively without a hitch. Dad, thrilled to be back in one of his favorite places, struck up conversations in German with every waiter and taxi driver we came across just to prove he could. I made sure to order everything in German, ask questions in the shops in German, and speak in English only when spoken to first. The only problem was Dad’s attire – everything on the “don’t” list, plus a bright blue hiking backpack with neon orange clips that he clipped over his shirts and wore everywhere. Overall, though, we had a great time in Germany and Austria and even met up with Dad’s old host family for an impromptu snack when we were in the neighborhood!
We eventually arrived in Barcelona and met up with the aunts, Bob, and Gramma outside of our hotel. We were in an older, more historical section, and Gramma wanted to go see a certain cathedral. Upon entering the hotel, the first words out of Aunt Carol’s mouth were, “DOES ANYONE HERE SPEAK ENGLISH?!” She repeated her question to the lady at the front desk, who answered, “Nope, Spanish,” with more than a hint of sarcasm. After the initial embarrassment, we asked the lady if there were any good tourist attractions that were okay for walking-challenged Gramma, and we mentioned the cathedral. “No, no!” she cried. “That will be so boring for your children. So old! You should see the MAGIC FOUNTAIN!” She helpfully gave us directions. Naturally, as we walked there, we had to stop every ten feet and make Carol, Lisa and Gramma were still behind us and not just randomly standing in the middle of the walkway taking pictures of the buildings, the people, the pigeons, the signs, the ground, the trash cans, the homeless man peeing in the street…
When we arrived at the fountain, I decided the concierge lady had pulled a little prank on the rude Americans. The fountain was there, and it was a very nice large fountain lit by many colors, but surrounding it was the Barcelona Gay Pride Festival. There were open-air urinals, rainbow everything, many people being affectionate, plenty of alcohol, and an enormous stage with an elaborate drag show being put on. My conservative Gramma was speechless, only uttering “Well…look at the very pretty men…” I was about to die trying to suppress my laughter as my relatives all stared blankly forward or at the ground and marched towards the fountain!
The rest of our trip had a similar theme of “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?!” Taxi drivers in Barcelona had long conversations with each other outside the taxi with the meter running, since we had no way of communicating with them in Spanish. English menus were demanded in Italy and France, often with the waiters’ faces drooping into a glower. Photo opportunities were apparently everywhere, even in the middle of crowded squares! We weren’t as bad as some of the stories on this blog, but I was still more than a little embarrassed that my family wasn’t even trying to fit in or do their best to interpret the menus. Luckily, nothing was stolen from us.
My Dad has invited me to come on another European cruise with my immediate family over the summer, this time with a week in Germany preceding a cruise around Sweden, Russia, and more northern countries. Unless he learns to speak a lot of Swedish and Russian before then, I think I will pass! 0910-15