Common courtesy dies at the altar of constant contact

We are not a nice people any more.

Friday night, the wife and I stopped at PF Chang's to grab some take-out fare. We placed our order, dropped a few bucks into the Chang coffers, and headed down the strip to browse while our dan dan noodles were fixed up, chop chop.

When we got back - after sampling Coldstone's pumpkin ice cream (a favorite flavor of mine but not the best pumpkin around, honestly) - we had to wait for another patron to pay for her take-out before we could grab our stuff and head home for a night of watching Deadwood on library-procured DVD.

Ah, and waiting for that woman was a true pleasure.

She was texting on her Razor phone the whole time, never once speaking to the Chang's employee, slapping her credit card down on the counter instead of handing it across or even sliding it close to the employee. The woman then continued to stand in the food waiting area texting on her phone, partially blocking the server door into the kitchen.

On the way out, I asked Karlen whether she thought that our generation is/would be viewed as rude by the generation that came before us, whether we have lost some of the social graces that older folks might've had. She pointed out that the woman in line before us wasn't of our generation - being probably ten to fifteen years older than we.

My question, however, was a more general one: are we less curtious than the generations before us?

For example, I was in PF Chang's wearing a sweatshirt and baseball cap because it's my typical weekend outfit. I certainly wasn't dressed for a sit-down dinner in the restaurant, but I was just dropping off an order and picking up food. I wouldn't even have considered sitting down in the restaurant wearing a ballcap nor in the sweatshirt that I was wearing (my oldest, trashiest Wabash one). Someone from my grandfather's generation, however, likely wouldn't have considered even stepping into the restaurant with a hat on head, but I kept it on while I ordered and picked up the food.

Are we less curtious? Have times changed?

Sure, both are true, and it gets to the heart of the matter, I guess, in that it's a difficult thing to attempt to judge other people. Each of them - whether they're someone as lke us as was the woman in PF Chang's with me or a Borneo native who has never seen a restaurant much less a Chang's. How am I to judge someone from another culture - be they from another nation or simply from another era or generation? Am I to give them a free pass with the disclaimer that they're not wrong, they're just from a different culture or do I have some ability to say that my culture is somehow better and that their actions are, in light of my cultural background, somehow wrong or bad or at least less correct?

If I don't have that ability - if cultural relativism truly is the rule of the day, then what rights do I have to tell the student in the hallway outside of my door to not tell his friend to shut the f*&^ up? How do I explain the distinction between an appropriate action within the school culture without somehow also saying that his action is not ok? without devaluing his culture?

And why didn't I say something to the woman on the cell phone if I do have the right to judge someone else?

Why did I, instead, simply discuss the issue with Karlen, not even doing as I had initially planned and apologizing to the PF Chang employee on the rude woman's behalf?

The last is the easiest to answer: because when she took our money and gave us our order, she immediately had to answer a call-in order on the phone right next to her.

If you do feel like juding, feel free to first check out these links about cell phone etiquette...from LetsTalk.com...from Microsoft's website...from Road & Travel Magazine