Toto! That's Not Polite

Tonight at dinner I noticed an alarming trend, politeness is disappearing at an incredibly fast pace. I sat alone at my table reading the manual for the class I'm taking and watched the waitress run around from rude table to rude table. Three different people sat at their respective tables having loud cell phone conversations indifferent to the fact that nobody else wanted to hear their conversations, two of which made the waitress stand there waiting while they continued to talk. One gentleman (and I use that term loosly) who was seated 4 tables over from me had his phone volume turned up so loud I could hear both ends of the conversation. HANG UP YOU ASS, you're in a restaurant not your car or hotel room. Nobody cares that your daughter's math homework is not yet done, and I most certainly don't want to hear about it during my dinner.

I watched people at the bar order meals and drinks without a please or thank you, people leaving 35 cents for a tip after 3 beers (that may be cheapness but it's still rude), and people not saying thank you when you hold the door for them. How tough is it? I stayed at the bar for 2 rounds of jeopardy with the bartender (who looks exactly like Sally Kirkland), the hotel manager and a salesmen that was in town for the night. When I got up to leave I pushed in my stool and said goodnight to the group, tip already on the bar for my one martini. As I was walking away I heard the bartender say "I wish everyone was that polite", and I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. It's how I was raised. Polite is easy and it goes a long way.

*Blog title said by Dorothy when Toto takes the hotdog off of Professor Marvel's stick.

Weird side note - Today at training someone was walking down the hall singing Ding Dong the Witch is Dead. It struck me as so odd I had to tell my trainer about the blogathon.