Manners Monday - "Bad Manners that Spook Me"

A black cat literally crossed my path this morning.  I was driving home from the gym at the early hour of 7am minding my own business when all of the sudden a cat popped out of nowhere and scampered across the street right in front of my car! I paused for a moment and wondered if the cat crossing was an ominous sign.  Did the cat know that Halloween was looming on the horizon?  Did he want to give me a little pre-Halloween scare?  I have absolutely no clue.  What I do know is that the silly cat succeeded in spooking me a little and became the inspiration for today’s Manners Monday post. 

Appropriately entitled, “Bad Manners that Spook Me,” I thought about the multitude of bad manners we have resigned ourselves to accept over the years that are natural repellents preventing us from being our best selves, as well as the collection of appalling manners we have come to amass more recently as a direct result of our deeply entrenched technological age and it scared the bejeezus out of me!  The bad manners examples  seemed endless with the most popular categories falling the three prominent areas of table, tech, and every day manners.  Below is just a smattering of what we found spooks us the most when it comes to bad manners.  What spooks you?  Share with us and let's see if we can make a dent to decrease our ill-mannered ways by next Halloween. 

Bad Table Manners that Spook Me

• Chewing with one’s mouth open.
• Talking with a mouth full of food.
• Using a finger to push food onto a fork rather than using a knife.
• Cutting ones food using the pitch-fork style rather than using the Continental style of dining.
• Cell phones on the table during the meal.
• Parents who let their kids use tech toys at the table to keep them calm.
• Relentless rudeness to the wait staff.
• Haggling over dollars and cents rather than just splitting the bill.

Bad Tech Manners that Spook Me

• Personalized smart phone rings that draw too much attention.
• Texting when in the company of others.
• Texting in favor of conversing with another who is well within ear shot.
• Texting a back-and-forth heated exchange instead of just picking up the phone!
• Irresponsible, thoughtless tweets. Who knew 140 characters could get us into so much trouble?
• Causing FOMO on Facebook by posting egotistical photos and captions of one’s fabulous life.  
• Emails with poor grammar, sentence structure and spelling.

Bad Every Day Manners that Spook Me

• Slow drivers who refuse to move into the slow lane.
• Someone who lets the elevator door close when another person is clearly approaching entry.
• A poor handshake that resembles a knuckle-cruncher.
• A loud talker who thinks the world needs to hang on their every word.
• Showing up to any party without a gift, unless it expressly says, “No gifts please.”
• Repeated tardiness from the same person.
• People who consistently exclude, put-down or are critical of others.
• Someone who continuously forgets your name and acts like they’re meeting you for the first time.
• Belching and passing gas in the company of women.

Feel free to add the manners that spook you the most to our growing list. Send them into us and we will be sure to incorporate them. Happy Halloween!!