What’s in a word?

I’ll keep this one short and sweet. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that pleasant manners can take a person a long way. With simple niceties like “please” and “thank you,” someone considered “high-maintenance” is more likely to get their needs met than if they were demanding. (I know this, because admittedly, I’m one of “those” types when I dine out.)

I noticed a massive decline in common decency at least a decade before we started using texts to communicate. Nowadays, we have begun excusing a near complete disregard for words like “hi” and “please/thank you” in texts. We charge right in with questions or comments, completely irreverent to the fact that the recipient might be in the middle of something far more pressing than whether or not they saw the latest episode of (fill in the blank with any binge-streaming show du jour). I call this “slam-texting.” 

I get it – texting is very convenient. Yet, I can’t help but ask myself, if I were physically in an office, would someone charge over to my desk first thing in the morning with no “hello” before telling me what to do? And if typing 5 letters feels daunting, I’ll add that “hi” has only two. 

I make efforts not to personalise things like this, and I am not doing so now. I will acknowledge, however, that I’m more motivated in my work when a client exhibits respectful consideration. I will deliver my work with the same stellar results to someone who doesn’t, as I would with someone who does, yet will I enjoy it to equivalent extent? Probably not.

And if I am coming across as pious, I will also acknowledge that, in the past, I’ve been guilty of slam-texting, as well. I’d like to think that my awareness of it changed my ways, however, so that’s what this post serves to do – bring awareness that will, hopefully, steer us back to those good, old-fashioned manners we’ve left by the wayside.