Give the check out assistant a medal and a promotion

Ana I have not suggested that good manners, being polite and courteous should be compulsory, just desirable.

There will always be some folk who think they are busier / more important/ plain selfish/ thoughtless/ rude etc and because of that will carry on as they always do!

Of course, nanaej - my point exactly! Courtesy is desirable, but can never be made compulsory, so until we live in an ideal world retail assistants will have to take the good with the bad, or find another type of job.

Personally I always make a point of looking the assistant in the eye and saying thank you. (just in case anyone's getting the wrong impression)

i don't think it is wrong to expect courtesy and to bring discourtesy to the attention of the rude person. Does not matter if i am being paid to do a job or not! Rude is rude!

As a teacher / headteacher I was being paid but I would challenge rudeness from parents/staff etc. Why should a checkout assistant?

shouldn't

No one's saying it's wrong to expect courtesy....

It's probably unrealistic though.

It Wasn't intentional rudeness. It's a debatable point whether it was rudeness at all.

"my only aim (and the job for which I was paid) was to put the customer's items through, ask for the final total and conclude the transaction"

A robot could do that.

I bet people appreciated it if you gave them a smile as well, or exchanged a few words if they spoke to you.

I bet some of them even tried to make the job more pleasant for you by being pleasant themselves and not behaving as if you were just a robot.

And I maintain you were paid to be pleasant too, or at least a bit more than robotic.

Ana I understood from your posts that you felt the checkout person should shut up and put up.., she was paid to do a job so if people were discourteous she had not rights to challenge .

I am saying that unless people who are not naturally polite are told about it they will go on thinking it's OK to ignore daily good manners.

We train children in school to say hello/good morning/ please/thank you etc.
and many parents expect that and teach their kids that too... when do we stop expecting people to behave like that?

I've made my point. If others don't agree, that's fine.

I'm certainly not going to spend the rest of the evening/night defending my opinion.

Quite - it's an indefensible position

Really? Only if you live in a Utopian PC world, bluebell...

I give and expect politeness. We are role models to our chldren, so where else will they learn it? Politeness cuts acoss society and both staff and customers shoudn't have to be told not to be rude to one another.

What a silly thing to say bluebottle

Blast my iPad.

Life's just too short to be rude or impolite, a smile is much nicer and often wins the grumpy people round

What on earth is a utopian pc world? Well, I suppose a dystopian unpc one is one where check out staff and other lowly creatures being paid a pittance to do a necessary job are supposed to put up with rude customers and say nothing

"bluebottle"! (love that)

Gosh Aka what a truly intelligent, thoughtful response - as ever

Gosh blue just because I thought your post silly! Let's get nasty and personal shall we, as ever!

It is quite rude to address somebody by the wrong name, isn't it?
I am heartened to see that the majority of people have come down on the side of courtesy.

What's that arcade game called where all the little heads pop out and you are supposed to bash them down with a rubber mallet?
Never mind. Time to

We had a few days of pleasantness but I see it's starting up again now that the same old characters have returned. Grow up!

Perhaps Aka could let us know which of us are allowed to post on which threads?

Have those people who make passing references to Utopia actually read and understood the book? I do get very cross about the word's use as if it is the same as Shangri La.