But the advice Thumper's father gave him is certainly the best way to keep the peace and maintain solid friendships and comfortable working relationships. Can't find something nice to say about/to someone about something? Don't say nothin' at all!.
Of course, the upshot to this advice is that what you say to other people (i.e., how you treat them) generally has a direct and immediate effect on how they treat you. If you are polite and friendly, people will generally respond in kind. Adversely, if you are rude and aloof, that's how people will react to you. Makes sense, right? Then why is it that so many people are so ill-mannered and inconsiderate these days? And why are they 'surprised' when the people they are rude to are discourteous back? What happened to the idea of 'common courtesy'?.
I make it a habit to say 'please' and 'thank you' to anyone I come in contact with – the server in the coffee shop, the cashier at the grocery store, the bookstore clerk, the staff at the dentist's office, and even the letter carrier who repeatedly delivers the wrong mail to my house. I purposely wait and hold doors open for people (young, old, in between – makes no nevermind to me), and I even let the person with a half dozen items in their basket go ahead of me in the checkout line when my cart is full. To me, this is second nature – it's the way I was raised (and the way I raised my children). What really surprises me is how shocked many of the recipients of my 'Please and thank you, have a nice day' approach are when I do these things. The sad fact of the matter is that they are taken aback by my acts of kindness because so few people exhibit these traits anymore. I watch, horrified, every day as people of all ages and walks of life ignore the tenets of common courtesy – seemingly because they think that they are the only ones who deserve to be waited on, or answered, or served.
