Oprah thinks America is rude, and she doesn’t even live in Philadelphia.

She devoted an article in her magazine to ranting about America’s lack of etiquette. From aggressive driving to people who chew gum with their mouths open, Oprah has a lot of pet peeves when it comes to bad manners.

At Penn, rudeness abounds. We have worse problems then bad drivers and exhibitionist gum chewers. Students order food while drunk and neglect to hold doors for their peers.

But students are not the only people in the Penn community with bad manners. The native Philadelphians who serve Penn students need some lessons in etiquette as well.

For example, I was waiting in line in CVS yesterday to buy some cold medicine while two employees were talking at their cash registers. I was the only person in line and was waiting for one of the employees to offer to help me. One of the employees then said, “You can go to whichever person you want, or you can just stand there.”

Sick and irritated, I tried to hold back the snide remark about proper customer service I wanted so badly to throw in her face. At the end of the transaction, she didn’t even say “Thank you” or “Have a nice day.” Instead, she continued talking to her coworker.

University City businesses need to keep manners in mind when it comes to serving their customers, though not all of them need this kind of help. There are definitely some great examples on campus, such as the ladies who work at Starbucks in Commons.

There’s just something about being called “Honey” that makes me feel more at home.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.