Nouveau rude
IF SOMEBODY swaggered up to you and asked, `Are you a yahoo', isn't it likely that you would say `I do yahoo all right, but am certainly not one!' But friends, bumpkins and fellow-yahoos, I beg to differ - for I believe we are all denizens of that insulting corporate jungle, where Darwin's theory of `The survival of the fittest' (foulest?) is proved right every nanosecond. But, I'm really not going to climb the moral-pulpit and deliver a stern lecture on `manners maketh the monkey' - because I don't believe I'm there myself. Yet. For I wonder if I respect those invisible yellow-courtesy lines around others and often find mine breached too! Therefore, I thought it would do us some good to point fingers at a lot of nouveau-21st-century-rationales and absolve ourselves from the moral decrepitude. Won't that be cathartic?
Mother of all reasons...
Why do you think educated and supposedly sophisticated people resort to language that would make a longshoreman blush? If you stopped any `ranter' and asked him the raison-d'etre for his ravings, he is likely to blink rapidly, several times. For often there isn't a single obvious trigger - more like the snowballed effect of a zillion minor irritants. Like for instance:
When one receives an e-mail sent using all the keys in the computer, especially those little squiggles over the numerals
Cubicle mates who talk at the decibel level of a power drill. Worse, when they sing, off-key
When mobile phones squawk loudly several times an hour, to the tune of the latest Shah Rukh blockbuster
Swear. Not the cross-my-heart-I-promise kind, but the sort that fisher-women resort to, when they haggle with their `cultured, polished' neighbours
When teammates feel totally at home in the office - eat the way they please, stretch the way they please and feel free to belch and sneeze as they please! But! They never say `please excuse me'.
Is this why there are so many yokels and yahoos vying for the title of `chief chawbacon'?
When downsizing, rightsizing and resizing is what's haute, gasket-manufacturers are the only ones laughing all the way to the banks. The e-mails that inundate the inbox, majority of them `importance high', lack of privacy in the space-saving cubicle-culture (which really means that all the contents of the screen are practically on the `public' folder) contribute to steam-generation at an alarming rate inside the already pressure-cooked-employee. Top lines and bottom lines have a telling effect on the middle-level-workers who are usually skewered and served with a sprig of parsley to the top-management. Is it any wonder that stressed-out bosses and peers vent their ire on anything in the vicinity? And you wondered why incivility was so rampant?
And now, a bit on `How to stave off skirmishes'
Customers and clients are seldom angels of courtesy. But since they fill the coffers, one has little choice but be civil to them. But what about hapless office-mates? Shouldn't the buck begin at the cubicle? For starters you could try...
Curse if you have to, but at least try and be less vulgar. Instead of the time-tested 4-letter tripe, try `Lord love a duck' and `I'll be a monkey's uncle'!
Remain professional. Keep emotions where they belong. In bed. All right, all right, at breakfast too
If you must be condescending and show your contempt in a meeting, be impartial. Do not single out anybody for a one-on-one mud-slinging match
If you really believe you cant transform yourself into a delightful, lovable, charismatic cherub, ask the HR guys to employ a savvy soft-skill trainer to cajole some civility into you
Spread chivalry all around, the Sir Walter Raleigh way. Lay your cloak on a puddle; your popularity graph will certainly soar all right, but please don't ask me to reimburse your dry cleaning bill
Grin and bear? Or shake a fist?
it is all very well to read about it and nod your head sagely. but, if and when you are disrespectful or audacious, you might be sorely tempted to hide behind the `i-have-a-reason-for-my-rage' and smartly quote one of the listed factors. do remember, the next time you lament that common courtesies or simple manners have gone the way that dodo or black and white tv's went, you too have had a hand in it!
APARNA KATHRIKAYAN
aa@cnkonline.com
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