(목동김상철토플전문학원) 고3 김혜빈 독립형 WT #171 동의 Since we’re living in a fast and crowded world, people should not expect others to be polite

[T&A Big Fan]

#171 Since we’re living in a fast a crowded world, people should not expect others to be polite.

(동의)

Over the past few decades, the world has become more and more fast and complex. So, it has been generally argued whether or not people should expect others to be polite in a world like this. Some might argue that people should expect others to be polite because it is a basic and fundamental attitude to have good etiquette toward others, while others might disagree. However, I am convinced that the fact that people are living in a fast and crowded world could be a good reason to not expect others to be polite. Actually, I have a couple of reasons to support my idea.

To begin with, people should not expect others to be polite because they won’t be able to move on with their work without being offended. In other words, workers need to understand when others are being rude while working. They shouldn’t expect people who are busy to become polite because it would negatively affect their working condition and efficiency. Although some people might say that living in a bustling world cannot be an excuse to expect others to be rude, survival in a fast and crowded world could not be continued when one expects and asks others to be more kind and polite because they will be hurt by the consequences and won’t be able to recover. To give a personal example of this, I used to have a friend who used to work in a big electronic device company. She worked as an intern, but she told me that she wanted to give up every day. She explained to me that her boss was always so rude to her and her co-workers never said hi to her because they were always so busy and stressed out. Even the barista in her company’s café was sometimes mean to her because he had so many customer orders to fulfill. However, after time past, she seemed to be doing just fine. When I asked her how she did it, she said she used to expect so much generosity and politeness from her fellow workers and bosses before. Then one day she met a very nice and kind taxi driver. When she talked about what the people around her, he told her that people are like garbage trucks. They are always full of garbage and they run around to collect more. When their garbage is so piled up, they would try to dump it. Sometimes, they could dump it on you, but the way to be strong is to just smile, shake it off and move on with your work. He told her that if he expected each and every one of his customers, he would’ve given up his job. However, he drives his taxi every single day without wavering or being shaken by the rudeness of anyone in his car. This made my friend think again about expecting others to be kind to her even when they’re busy. She told me that if she took everything personal, there would be no place for her in this fast and crowded society.

Moreover, expecting others to be polite is likely to endanger some social relationships. Sometimes, you get to form relationships with people with different circumstances, values and habits in life. However, expecting all of them to be polite can endanger most social relationships in your life. Although some people might say that strongly expecting and asking for politeness can actually sustain and fix relationships, relationships can be sustained and fixed by itself when it is left alone and expected of nothing. To give a certain example, researchers observed two groups of teenagers. One group was a group full of teenagers expecting others to be polite and the other group was a group of teenagers around the same age who didn’t expect others to be polite in busy times. When they were teenagers, the first group that expected good manners from others seemed to have better and strong relationships with people. However, when researchers came back to them a few weeks later, it was the second group that was has more and various relationships in society. Even in times when their parents were busy and snapped at them, the second group of teenagers would understand and acknowledge that their parents are surviving in a pretty crowded world. However, the first group would fight with their exhausted parents when they come back after work because the parents would be so impolite to them. Not only that, when researchers gave both groups a part time job, the first group wouldn’t last 2 weeks doing the part time job because their customers or co-workers would be so rude to them. On the other hand, the second group was able to maintain any certain job, acknowledge and understand people and even be light friends with their co-workers. Just like dancing in a crowded room full of quickly squirming people, expecting others to be polite in a fast and crowded world could be destructive.