Please and Thank You

Thursday – which, as it happens, is karaoke night - has long been held by the regulars to be the best night in the Taps.

The karaoke is mainly incidental, save that people who regularly (and there is quite a regular Thursday crowd) go to karaoke generally seem to be a nice lot. It’s mainly the fact that it’s almost the weekend and that over time a tradition has developed that Thursday is a drinking night (Friday morning work hangover be damned). The karaoke is therefore mainly mostly a distraction for those so inclined.

Basically Thursdays are Fridays without the awesome crowds of scum and villainy that you get on a Friday.

My point being: I like Thursdays. We all like Thursdays. Thursdays are Fridays for the regulars and semi-regulars.

Except of course when it’s pay week or when there’s a Friday Bank Holiday. Then Thursday is a Friday.

[Got it?]

So, yesterday (Thursday, which was a Friday) I was at the bar watching the scum [now I should make clear that obviously not all random people are scum. Most of them are just normal decent people who fancy a mid week drink after getting paid. I like them. They're nice. I approve of their discerning tatste in choosing to drink in such a fine drinking establishment. However, because the Taps is open until 12:30 on a Thursday you also get the George and Ratlers crowd in. Which is another way of saying: massive scum] ordering their drinks, and I was genuinely shocked to see how many of them (and these were all without fail men under 23 or so) just flat out refused to say ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ when doing so.

Seriously, when did it become ok to not say please or thank you when you’re talking to the bar staff?

Surely the efficiency saving involved in barking ‘two pints of Strongbow’ and then turning away to talk to your mate, is not so great compared to, for example, saying, ‘Hi [or some variation upon], can I have two pints of Strongbow, please?’ And then turning away to talk to your mate, that you would forego such basic courtesy.

How is that there are people on this planet who don't know that when their drink/change comes they're supposed to smile and say thank you.

In fact don’t smile if you don’t want to. Hey, sometimes you don’t want to smile. Who wants to smile all the time anyway. Certainly not me. I don't want to suborn anyone in to feigning emotion. I'm no more comfortable with that than you are. But come on guys, do say thank you. Or cheers or whatever. I’d venture that sometimes just a small sincere smile would even suffice.

Anyway, so I was at the bar talking to my brother and I just couldn’t work how, as a society, we’ve come to this. How we’ve got people – adults – running around the country who don’t know that they’re supposed to say please and thank you. How can they possibly have been raised so badly, so negligently, so sadly, that basic social courtesies are beyond them.

These are people cut off from the basic simple joy of being pleasant to another human being. Of another human being – a stranger – being nice to you.

How did this happen?

Well, as I say, I was talking to my brother and he argued that it was actually deliberate. Which is to say that these people understood that they should say please and thank you, and that indeed these people’s naturally inclination would be to say please and thank you, but that they were actively making the decision not to do so.

Sounds implausible right?

But here’s his reasoning. He reckons that it’s some sort of macho ‘look at how cool I am, I can get served without saying please or thank you’ thing.

No, really, apparently this is the reason. They think it makes them look cool in front of their friends to treat other human beings like crap. Or rather, it does make them look cool in the eyes of their friends to that.

Totally mental right? I mean there are a whole section of people with a completely different set of behavioural norms to our own.

Now, as I say this is my brother’s theory. Personally I think they’ve just been failed by the people who were supposed to be bringing them up, and it’s just that they don’t know how to interact with normal people.

Or that they’re just scum.

Either way though, let’s not stand for it. Let’s just not. If you’re sat at the bar, and you see/hear someone do it, just politely ask them whether they meant to say please and thank you.

Be nice about it.

Be friendly.

Choose your moment and don't get yourself beaten up.

And, if you’re bar staff and it happens to you don’t acknowledge them. Walk away and serve someone else and then come back, and if they do the same thing again well then walk away again.

We can either help these people or we can condemn them to a life of scum and villainy. Let's make a difference.