Pet Peeves Dept.

     Yes, I have a few. I’m sure you do, too. Most of them have to do with behaviors that I find irritating – and that, too, is probably the same for you. And I’ll bet you that among the things that chafes you most is when someone tries to defend a behavior that you find offensive or discommoding.

     The thing is, that happens a lot. Over my 68 years it’s rendered me ever less tolerant of a considerable range of human self-indulgences. And yes, I’m sure that I have eccentricities that bother others quite as much as anything they do might bother me. But I’m the one writing this BLEEP!ing column, so it’s my turn to vent.

     I’ve written about the preciousness of time, and more than once at that. My consciousness of that preciousness, and of the uncertainty of the future, have led me to treat time – mine, yours, and everyone else’s – with immense seriousness. One consequence is that I am never, ever late for an appointment.

     A lot of people take others’ time lightly. They feel free to be late if it suits them – and they take it ill if they’re criticized for their tardiness. I’ve known a few such persons, and over time I’ve shed all involvement with them. That includes practitioners of many professions and trades. They charge for their time; why should I allow them to treat my time as of no value?

     Yet the great majority of them have striven to excuse themselves for their profligacy with my time. Some have even asserted it as their privilege, owing to their personal importance or involvements. It baffles them when I refuse to “see their point.”

     This morning, my gaze landed upon this article:

     Confession: I am a late person. At least, one in recovery. In fact, I’ve repeatedly, and embarrassingly, missed the deadline for this article. I’d love to pretend this is some journalistic form of ‘method’ acting. It is not.

     I know I’m not alone. We all know that person: there’s the child minder who is always late, the colleague who misses every deadline, even if just by a few hours, the friend you must tell to arrive 30 minutes earlier than she needs to for your lunch reservation.

     There are few habits as infuriating as someone making us wait. But, despite what may be running through your mind as you’re kept waiting again, it’s unlikely your friends and colleagues are just being selfish. A look into the psychology of lateness offers a glimpse into a mind that that may be malfunctioning. But there’s also more than one fix. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

     “It’s unlikely your friends and colleagues are just being selfish.” What rescues that statement from complete damnation is the word just. They most certainly are behaving selfishly. It’s “just” that they have reasons. If you’d only listen to them, you’d immediately understand why your time and convenience must be sacrificed on the altar of their arrogance, priorities, or phobias.

     GRRR!

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     The modern era has enshrined a few attitudes that I can’t fathom. One is the general conviction that you must never criticize a man to his face. You must never take exception to someone else’s behavior, no matter how it impacts you. One of the consequences is that bad, antisocial behavior never receives the negative feedback that would curb it.

     Herewith, a vignette I’ve related before:

     On the way back from another errand I’d stopped at a local shopping center for something or other. As I parked I spied a knot of teenagers congregated in front of the strip mall. One of them was eating handfuls of something from a plastic bag. As I debarked he dropped the empty bag on the sidewalk, though there was a garbage can less than six feet away.

     Being a terrible martinet and a scold of the first water, I said nothing. I merely walked up to the young litterer, stooped, grabbed his trash and stuffed it into the garbage can with emphasis, glaring at him all the while. Now, I’m not large – about 5’7”, 160 lb. – and this young ruffian towered over me. But his face turned as white as if I’d leveled a gun at him.

     “I was going to do that,” he stammered.

     I shook my head and entered the store. The clerk, who had witnessed the event, said plaintively that what I had done was “very brave.”

     Why did she say that? What I did wasn’t brave at all. The kid couldn’t have hurt me, though he didn’t know that. What he did know was what he saw: I had asserted a rule of public order that he knew about but had casually flouted. Perhaps no one in his experience had ever done such a thing. That someone had dared to assert that rule visibly struck terror into him.

     Now, I’m not particularly imposing. I wasn’t carrying a weapon. I didn’t have a squad of law enforcers at my back. And I did hesitate briefly before doing what I did. What I’d really like to know is whether anyone else in that kid’s previous life had ever hauled him up short for a similar offense against public order. Was I the first? It struck me as incredible then, and it still does.

     Public order is founded upon a set of expectations about individuals’ behavior. Individuals who disregard those expectations – who fail to treat them as rules – offend against public order and contribute to its demise. The only thing that preserves public order against such degradations is the high probability of an undesirable consequence.

     It’s that way with littering. It’s that way with lateness. It’s that way with pain-threshold volumes of ugly “music” imposed upon businesses and passers-by. It’s that way with sidewalk-obstructing vendors and street performers and encampments of bums homeless. And I think we all know it, in our hearts. What troubles me is how utterly unwilling we are – individually and as a society – to act on it.

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     I don’t intend to condemn the article I cited in the opening section. Laura Clarke does make several good points. However, it’s the correctives she advocates that deserve the most attention. They come down to this:

• Set boundaries and make them known.
• Impose consequences for their violation.

     To do that, we must be willing to punish: an even more terrifying threshold to cross than to offer criticism. The modern anathematization of all forms of negative feedback has rendered us all but paralyzed in the face of even the most outrageous behavior. Some of that is simple timidity; some is the wish that “someone else” would handle it. In either case, it constitutes a passive kind of reinforcement for selfish, self-indulgent behavior and the tears it leaves in the public order.

     Just a Curmudgeonly thought as we hurtle toward 2021.