Are good manners a thing of the past?
Irish Examiner journalist Esther McCarthy has reason to believe that people have become ruder and less considerate towards others.
As proof, she cited a recent experience she had taking an Air Coach to Dublin first thing in the morning.
“Two lads get on the opposite side to me, six in the morning and started drinking Fanta, followed with milk, followed with crunchy crisps,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.
“I could manage that, you’re hungry, I’ll get over it.
“But when he took out the phone and started listening to his TikTok with no earphones, full volume, laughing away at it.
“I was like, am I actually hallucinating? That can’t be acceptable.”
After feeling cross about it for a while, Ms McCarthy decided she simply could not bear to listen to his TikTok for the whole three-hour trip to Dublin.
“I was like, ‘Sure, look, this is really distracting, would you ever mind putting on your earphones?’” she recalled.
“He lost the plot and started roaring back at me.
“So, I did the Mammy thing, you know where you do the look, I lowered my voice, leaned into towards him… and repeated myself.
“His partner pulled him back down and gave him his earphones.”
'Am I just this old hag?'
Ms McCarthy believes there is an “unspoken social contract” of rules about things that are not illegal but do make life difficult for those around you.
“There’s certain things I believe that you shouldn’t do but I was thinking, am I just this old hag? Is it a generational thing?” she said.
“But then you see older people doing it as well, so I don’t know if that theory holds water.”
Ms McCarthy thinks playing music out loud demonstrates a “lack of respect for people” around you.
“There’s so many people with sensory issues,” she said.
“I’m just cranky but it could actually just be very upsetting if there was someone else who couldn’t manage it… At the very minimum, I feel use your bloody earphones if you’re listening to tripe on a train.”
You can listen back here:
Main image: Man on his phone in the cinema.
