The driver, cell phone
clamped to his ear, was exiting the freeway. From one of
the far left-hand lanes. Without benefit of a turn signal. In
an extreme hurry. Forcing me to punch the brakes to keep
my Ford from being transformed into scrap metal.
Either Mr. Beemer was
oblivious to my existence, or he had simply decided that
I would have to make way. He was disappearing from view as I recovered
my wits and growled a seven-letter vulgarity that fast was
becoming a staple of my Bay Area driving vocabulary.
This happened during
the summer, maybe a couple of months after we moved here.
By that time, I already had been baptized in the ways of Silicon
Valley. I had witnessed the daily acts of insanity on the
highways. Seen a customer berate a grocery store clerk nearly
to the point of tears. Had someone literally run to get
in front of me at the hardware store check-out aisle. (And I was
buying a single bolt. With cash.
But as the BMW vanished
on the exit ramp, I reached a conclusion: This was the most
impatient and flat-out inconsiderate place I have ever lived.
Call it my rude awakening.
So, I’m asking: Have
I arrived at a time when everybody is having a really bad
year, or did I mistakenly move to Manhattan? Am I wrong in thinking
that those of us who live and/or work in the valley are
operating at a constant state of egocentric high anxiety,
where any perceived encroachment on our shrinking time and
space leads to hair-trigger tempers?
Is
money the root of our evils?
Because civility, like
beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, an introduction probably
is in order.
I didn’t just arrive
here from Mayberry. I’m a native New Yorker--upstate, not
the city--and have lived in several metropolitan regions including
Phoenix, Detroit and most recently, the country’s unofficial
road rage capital--the Los Angeles area.
A reasonably thick
skin is the result of my previous life: sportswriter. (And
trust me, you’ll never truly understand the depths of incivility
until you’ve been confronted, nose-to-nose, by a 300-pound
All-Pro NFL offensive lineman just after you’ve written
about his alleged cocaine problem in that morning’s newspaper.)
Nevertheless, the thought
did occur to me that I was becoming hypersensitive and for
some unexplained reason had suddenly gone all Emily Post. Maybe
I hadn’t yet adjusted to the valley’s frantic, gadget-saturated,
24-7 lifestyle and was only imagining a strong, healthy
nasty streak here.
What did other people
think?
“How can you be from
New York and think this place is less civil?” asks an incredulous
Tom Shanks, who himself fled New York City and now is a senior
fellow at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied
Ethics. But then Shanks cut short his defense of the valley--and
his laughing--with another thought. “I do know people who
tell me that they don’t want to raise their kids here. I’ll
say, ‘Do you realize how bad it is in other places?’ And they’ll
say, ‘Yeah, but that doesn’t make it good here.’”
In fact, the consensus
in my completely unscientific survey of ethicists, researchers,
cops and other just plain regular folks is that things aren’t
good here when it comes to our behavior.
“Unfortunately I think
you’re on to something,” says Sue Fox, a 25-year Los Gatos
resident who is the author of two “Etiquette for Dummies” books.
“I hate to say it, but I think the wealth has created an
arrogance and an attitude. Somebody is always verbally abusing
someone else around here.”
Or utilizing hand gestures.
Fox is hardly the first
to suggest that New Economy money is the root of ill-mannered
evils and distorted values. This spring, the Wall Street Journal
pointed the finger at the dot-com world--filled with young, brash,
rich entrepreneurs who are unburdened by tradition and consider
themselves invincible--as emblematic of a national incivility
that increasingly is being accepted as normal behavior.
“I wouldn’t rule out
the possibility that there is a specific problem in a place
like Silicon Valley because of the pressures and stress in that
highly competitive workplace,” adds P.M. Forni, a Johns
Hopkins University professor who examines civility. “The
new stereotype of Silicon Valley is of the successful technology
geek who not only has no manners, but doesn’t care.”
In other words, our
Darwinian approach to business has followed us out the office
door, onto the freeways and into the malls, shoving aside that
time-worn cliche image of Northern Californians as laid-back
wine-sippers. Throw in the fact that some of us are resentful
of not striking it rich, the average house goes for more
than a cool half-million, reasonable commutes don’t exist, and
the valley’s motto seems to be ‘go, go, go” and it’s no
wonder that we’re more prone to blowing our stacks over
the most trivial of transgressions.
But while Chuck Darrah,
a San Jose State anthropology professor who studies high
tech culture, says that people often tell him the valley is a
cold and unfriendly place, he contends that the truth is
a lot more complicated than just labeling us as an irritable
or boorish community.
“A lot of behaviors
that get lumped as uncivil are strikingly similar to the
same qualities that are extolled as virtues here, like impatience
and aggressiveness,” Darrah explains. “There’s a very fine
line between the things we celebrate as giving this place
an edge that also make it anything but a warm and fuzzy
place to be.”
Darrah adds another
thought.
“There are people who
come here with that gold rush mentality,” Darrah says. “Well,
gold rush towns were not nice places.”
Time
is of the essence
It’s mid-September
and I’m standing in a lengthy line at Home Depot in San
Jose. Next to me, two men are complaining loudly about the stupidity
of having only two check-out counters open and how stores
never have enough hired help. As one finally reaches the
register, his mood is growing fouler by the second and the
clerk tries to calm him down. But the second man, standing behind
him, cuts her off.
“Just do your [expletive]
so we all can get out of here,” he barks.
The clerk doesn’t miss
a beat. She shouts over her shoulder to another employee:
“Better get some help up here because they’re already yelling
at me.”
It’s 8:10 on a Sunday
morning.
Incivility admittedly
is a vague subject. But it’s also become a hot-button issue.
National opinion polls suggest a universal sense that modern America
is sliding down a slippery slope toward a cesspool of misbehavior.
In most surveys, Forni
says, six out of 10 Americans say other people are rude,
while eight or nine of the same 10 will say the situation has
worsened over the last decade. And why not? We’re constantly
subjected to reports about airplane rage, parents brawling
at youth sporting events and arguments over use of cell
phones in public places, not to mention Jerry Springer and Howard
Stern.
That doesn’t even include
what Forni calls the “micro-cruelties” of everyday life
that people love to share with him. Things like chatterboxes who
talk during movies, seeing others brush their teeth in office
drinking fountains and having their lunch stolen by CO-workers--or
worse, discovering that their pizza slice is minus one bite.
Here in the valley,
everyone has a horror story.
Fox once was entering
a downtown Saratoga parking lot just as an elderly woman
was trying to back out of a space. The woman wanted Fox to back
up. But there were other cars behind Fox, trapping her.
“She started screaming
and yelling at me,” Fox remembers. “I just put my hands
in the air and smiled, and that got her even more mad. My theory
is kill them with kindness because people here aren’t used
to it.”
Ralph Salmon, a 66-year-old
third-generation San Jose resident, tells of how he saw
a freeway disagreement culminate with an enraged driver throwing
a piece of metal at another motorist--while driving 60 miles
an hour. Recently his wife, Sue, was in a grocery store
line when a clerk opened an additional check-out aisle and
motioned for her. Except another customer cut her off.
“When my wife complained,
the woman made some comment,” Salmon explains. “So my wife
looked at the checker and said, ‘Did you hear what she said?’
The clerk said, ‘What do you want me to do, hit her?’”
I had called Salmon
because he and his wife operate Chapel of Flowers mortuary.
I wanted to know if he could debunk what I had believed was an
urban myth--that impatient motorists here routinely cut
into funeral motorcades. No, Salmon said, common decency
hadn’t yet sunk that far.But wait. Gus Lima, of Lima Family Mortuaries,
has a different view.
“We come across it
all the time,” says Lima, another San Jose native. ”It seems
like everyone is in a hurry and a funeral procession is just the
opposite. You can see it in people’s faces when you come
along, that you’re interrupting their day. Some people just
decide that nothing is going to stop them.”
Even death
Any discussion about
our behavior comes back to how we act on the roadways. The
occasional stories of road rage that grab headlines send a chill
down our spines because we all can envision ourselves being
the victims of such incidents.
But Steve Oreglia,
a public affairs officer with the California Highway Patrol
in San Jose, says that occurrences of road rage--intentional violent
acts aimed at other motorists--on California highways actually
have decreased from a few years ago.
“It’s the aggressive
driving that has become more common here than in the past,”
Oreglia adds. “That’s when you’re on your own program and you
really don’t care about anyone else.”
Oreglia attributes
that to a syndrome that afflicts the entire region: lack
of time.
“One thing I would
come across often when I was making road stops was a parent
saying, ‘Hey, it costs me $5 for every minute I’m late to day
care,’” he explains. “So driving becomes more stressful
because every delay is potentially making you late.”
What Forni calls “the
worst story of incivility in the new millennium” occurred
at the San Jose International Airport: when an unknown man reached
into Sara McBurnett’s car after a fender bender and tossed her
little dog named Leo into traffic, killing the 18-pound
bichon frise.
That happened on a
Friday in February. Now it’s another Friday seven months
later at the airport. Most everyone wears the same look of grim
determination that suggests they just hope to get through
the traffic and long lines as painlessly as possible.
“What happened to the
dog was so sad, but it’s also the kind of thing that this
environment breeds,” says one woman who doesn’t want to give her
name because she works at the airport.
“The whole Bay Area
is horrible when it comes to manners,” she adds. “People
here think that everyone else can go to hell because it’s all
about me and mine. Everyone is racing around. It’s like,
‘Keep up or get out of my way because I’m going to run you
down.’”
Michelle Burke, who
runs a business consulting firm, recently was crossing a
downtown San Francisco street when she noticed that a woman, perhaps
in her 80s, had fallen to the ground. Only Burke came to
the assistance of the badly shaken woman as everyone else
ignored her, seemingly more interested in getting out of
the street as soon as possible.
“All I kept thinking
was: ‘What if this had been my grandmother?’” she says,
adding, “We all know the stories about our all-time high of pedestrians
being hit by cars. I think that’s also part of this conversation
about civility, or the lack thereof.”
Vicious
cycle
My wife bought a couple
of uniforms that our youngest daughter’s public school requires.
But when she wanted to return them a few days later, the store
clerk told her she couldn’t because the clothes had been washed.
No, my wife said, they
haven’t. Yes, the clerk countered, they have. She proceeded
basically to call my wife a liar in front of other customers.
Livid, my wife came home and called the store, seeking the
manager. The same clerk answered.
“You can talk to him,
but he's meaner than I am,” she said.
He was. And they wouldn’t
take back the clothes.
Those in the service
industry can respond with their own anecdotes about demanding,
unreasonable customers. Or at least many wish they could. “I could
tell you some stories,” says one mall clerk with a world-weary
look that reminds me of a war veteran. “But we’re not allowed
to.”
Elio Hernandez works
at a Palo Alto flower shop and says sometimes people will
get upset at him when he’s simply making a delivery to their house.
“It’s like they don’t
even want to be disturbed,” he says. “Here I have something
for them, but I’m still bothering them. People seem to be isolating
themselves from having any human contact.”
Walk Palo Alto’s downtown
streets and it’s amazing how many people are talking on
cell phones or staring at hand-held devices. They’re in a trance,
ignoring the real people around them and providing vivid examples
for the argument that advancements in technology are cultivating
antisocial behavior.
Ofer Zur, a Sonoma-based
psychologist and consultant, believes all those speedy and
supposedly timesaving devices have had the unintended consequence
of multitasking us to the point where we’ve actually become
more time-deprived.
“The effect on people
is that we’re harried, we’re frustrated, we’re easier to
anger,” Zur says. “The most harried people in the country are
in Silicon Valley because there’s this inverse relationship
between speed and civility.”
Often it’s left to
law enforcement to mediate the resulting, harried disputes.
Sgt. John Costa of the Palo Alto Police Department, recently played
referee for a bout between a man and woman (he thought she reacted
to a light change too slowly because she was on a cell phone)
that went from gestures to angry words to out-of-the-car
confrontation.
“It’s almost laughable
in some cases as people lose self-control over meaningless
things,” Costa says. “It’s people fighting over cabs, parking
spaces, reservations at restaurants. None of this stuff is new.
But I’m seeing an increase in these things because I think
we’re a little edgier, less patient and less tolerant.”
A vicious cycle is
created. As we’re all treated with what we deem is uncivil
behavior, we become less inclined to put up with it. Consider
it a zero tolerance policy.
That mentality begins
in our ultra-competitive business environment where civility
even can be seen as a sign of weakness. You know, nice guys (and
gals) finish last.
A recent University
of North Carolina survey of 775 workers nationally found
that it’s a jungle out there: A majority of them lost work time
because of a rude, insensitive or disruptive coworker. Also,
37 percent of those surveyed said their commitment to the
company declined as a result of incivility and 12 percent
even changed jobs because of a coworker’s actions.
“Often the leanness
and meanness that companies increasingly expect is turned
within and not just out against competitors,” says Christine Pearson,
a researcher at the university’s Kenan-Flagler Business
School.
Dr. Lawrence M. Shuer,
the chief of staff at the Stanford University Medical Center,
was concerned enough about slipping civility that three years
ago he wrote a column for the hospital newsletter urging
workers to do some soul-searching.
“There had been a couple
of incidents, like a physician acting out in one of the
patient wards, yelling at people,” Shuer explains. “I was saying
that not only is civility the right thing to do, but when
you have physicians yelling at nurses, that drifts into
creating a hostile work environment.”
And, yes, the thought
has crossed his mind to have the article reprinted.
More
mice in the maze
This paper sign is
taped to a wall in our doctor’s office:
If you are grouchy,
irritable or just plain mean, there will be a $10 charge
for putting up with you.
The receptionist smiles
and says it’s meant to keep the mood light in the waiting
room. “But,” she adds, “it can be a wake-up call for some
people.”
But what if the civility
problem is me? Well, not me personally. (I, of course, would
never, ever cut someone off in traffic.) But I’m representative
of the newcomers who are pushing this area to the saturation
point.
“Maybe Silicon Valley
is suffering from the equivalent of putting more mice into
the maze,” Forni suggests. “Sooner or later they will end up fighting
each other.’
Remember what Lily
Tomlin once said: The trouble with being in the rat race
is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.
“The reason why Manhattanites
act the way they do is because there’s just too many damn
people on that little island,” adds Bill Spohn, an ethics
professor at Santa Clara. “Numbers also breed impersonality. When
we’re a nation of utter strangers, that diminishes shame
and guilt.”
Here in the valley,
that “stranger” effect could be occurring because so many
people have come here to make a living, but not necessarily make
a home. If folks are just passing through in hopes of striking
it rich and feel they have no stake in the community, wouldn’t
that affect their behavior?
But San Jose State’s
Darrah notes that the valley culture--the part that helped
make this area a high-tech juggernaut--also includes an openness
about sharing information and an eagerness to network.
“This doesn’t mean
that people are smiling and nice all the time, but in terms
of self-interest, you can’t develop a reputation as someone who
won’t help other people out,” Darrah says. The result, in
valleyspeak, is “value-added talk.” Time-pressed people
quickly will evaluate if those they encounter have anything
of value to add to their lives. If not, they quickly move on.
“People here tend to
blurt and then expect a short response,” adds Bay Area futurist
Stewart Brand. “I think in a way it’s a sort of courtesy because
our time is short. If someone is in a screaming hurry, it’s
impolite to drag out the conversation.”
Brand also places little
credence in surveys suggesting that society is more rude
today than in the past. He believes it’s human nature to “want
the good ol’ days to be good ol’ days, even if they weren’t.”
That sentiment is echoed by Mark Caldwell, who writes in
his book “A Short History of Rudeness” that debates about
declining manners are something of national tradition.
But debate, says Santa
Clara’s Shanks, is good. While he says we should be thankful
that we’re not New York City, he wonders if we might not be heading
toward a “real slide” in terms of how we act. He cites how we’re
struggling to deal with our region’s growing diversity.
“We’re a culture that’s
trying to absorb a large number of people in a relatively
short period of time who don’t all look the same,” he says. “People
who are white and more affluent tend to dismiss whole groups of
people. An awful lot of the incivility that I do see is
because Caucasians aren’t happy that the face of the valley
is changing.”
There in lies the underlying
concern about incivility. The fear is that it ultimately
can lead to something more sinister--much the way aggressive driving
can set the stage for road rage.
Share
the pain
Are
we really getting ruder? Tell us your stories of uncivil
behavior--or of random acts of kindness--and we’ll share
them with others. E-mail magazine@sjmercury.com
or fax (408) 271-3618 or write:
Incivility
SV Magazine
750 Ridder Park Drive
San Jose, CA 95190
“People always ask
me, ‘With all the violence in the world, what are ‘please’
and ‘thank you’ going to do?’” says Fox, the etiquette maven.
“But you have to start somewhere. Besides, the real issue
people need to think about is how they treat their loved
ones after a bad day of living here. Somebody always becomes
the punching bag, whether it’s your children or your spouse. Is
that the way we want to act?”
Have
a nice day
I was driving in San
Jose when a car merged onto the highway, cutting sharply
in front of me. Upset that the person didn’t yield to my obvious
right of way, I waved an arm in frustration. The woman,
clearly just as adamant that she was in the right and now
probably convinced there was a complete idiot behind her,
responded by raising her fist at me.
Then, a blond head
popped up from the car’s back seat, separating the supposed
adults. A small girl began pleasantly waving at me, a big smile
on her face. Properly put in my place with this sudden dose
of perspective, I waved back feebly.
It felt good making
a “nice” gesture. I had almost forgotten how to do it.
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