COLUMN: Disrespect is bred early on
The other day, I saw something amazing at work.
As I was stocking shelves in the middle of an aisle, I saw two high-school- or college-age girls looking at some posters, talking and giggling as they flipped through the poses of Blink 182 and Dave Matthews. Suddenly, one accidentally knocked a tall cardboard display onto the floor.
Nothing was harmed, and it wasn’t a large mess. Besides, we all knock things over. The amazing thing to me was seeing the two girls stop talking, look down at what they had knocked over, and go back to choosing the perfect poster to cover their wall. Both had looked back down at the floor a couple times before they looked over and realized I (along with another employee) was stocking other items further down the aisle, and had seen the whole thing. We heard one of them say “I think they saw that,” and they both walked away, leaving the display lying across the aisle.
Later that day, while I was thinking about those two disrespectful (or maybe just lazy) girls, I saw a similar incident, this time involving a mother and her child, who appeared to be about 3 or 4 years old. As the mother walked down an aisle of books, she knocked one off the shelf, looked at it, and kept walking. Seconds later, I witnessed her child drop a pack of candy on the floor, and as kids that age do, repeated her mother’s actions of looking at it and walking away.
These are not isolated incidents. In a clothing store I used to work at, I actually saw adults pick up items, unfold them, decide they don’t like them, and throw them on the floor. I’ve seen people sit in an aisle for a couple hours, reading a magazine, then leave it lying on the floor when they’ve finished. I’ve seen parents calm crying children by buying them the toy they’re crying for in the first place. If I had acted that way when I was that age, I would’ve been crying for a different reason – the same reason I wouldn’t be able to sit for a week.
The point of these stories is to illustrate how rude and disrespectful people can be in public. It’s not just a matter of me having to pick a book up off the floor. After all, I do work there. It’s a matter of being responsible for our actions, which start small, but eventually become habitual.
It’s also a matter of parents acting this way in front of children. Young children learn more by watching their parents then listening to them. When the mother and child mentioned above go home, and the kid drops her crayons on the kitchen floor, what does that mother expect from her? That kid won’t understand the difference between a store and her house in this respect.
Once this habit becomes part of a child’s routine, he becomes the teenager who talks during the movie, or carries schoolbooks in one hand and a gun in the other. Then he grows into the restaurant cook who spits in your food, or hits your car in the parking lot and drives away. Eventually, he turns into the adult who brakes into your house, or the politician who starts a world-ending war.
And to think, it all could’ve been avoided by picking up that book.
Jason Robey is a senior majoring in public relations. He can be reached at jasonr@cc.usu.edu.