When Did We Become So Rude & Uncaring?

I mentioned a while back about the rude man who almost knocked over a pregnant woman to steal the seat I was giving u for her as she boarded the train.  It is nothing new on my commute but the level of rudeness from people who just do not care about the people around them surprised me.

It started first thing, the bus I take to the train station was about 5 minutes early, a regular rider was crossing the street not far away but the driver would not wait.  The next bus is only 15 minutes later but means you miss the last train into the city and your commute gets much longer.  The bus was early, the person was less than 1 minute away.  A little while later the rude driver “didn’t notice” a disabled person waiting at a stop and blew past him stopping further down the street complaining the whole time that the person was taking too long to wheel himself to the bus “it is going to be one of those bloody days” he said loud enough for the whole bus to hear – I am sure the passengers you are causing issues for agree!

It got worse as we got into Toronto.  Someone tried to steal my purse.  He cut the straps on my purse and it fell right through my hands.  I was super lucky that I had a load of stuff for work making it really heavy and it fell through his hands as he grabbed it too.  I had my passport and everything in my purse yesterday as I was signing a document where I needed several forms of ID – I can’t imagine losing everything in there.  It seems however that the criminal did manage to grab another purse as he ran.  My purse had spilled down the stairs and not one person stopped to help, instead they stepped on my things.  I realize the station is busy and its hard to stop dead on the stairs and I am grateful to have only lost a few items to crushing rather than my tablet, wallet, ID and all of the other stuff I carry with me on a daily basis.  When I had collected it all up (to a chorus of impatient people) and got to the bottom of the stairs the woman whose purse had been stolen was asking if anyone seen him etc and people just kept walking.

So holding onto my heavy purse like a sack, I went to the bank, stopped by Winners to buy a new purse and arrived at the office 20 minutes late to a person from another department who saw me come in standing there tapping her watch saying what time do you call this?  While we officially start at 9, we work flexible hours, I can come in when I feel like it and since I was going to the bank for work – I can do that after 9 anyway but when I told her the story of my hellish morning she shrugged, says it happens and carried on.

As the day went on, the rudeness of people just carried on.  A guy who thought he could go to the front of the line at Tim Hortons “because he is in a rush” dude this is downtown Toronto, we are all in a rush.  While booking something for work, I called an  employee who had messed up on the file to clarify and mentioned I needed it ASAP because the booking agent was waiting and we all wanted to go home “the booking agent should just be happy about the commission”.  She likely is happy about the commission but she still finished work 30 minutes before and is staying late to help us out despite having a baby  at home to get home to because you made a mistake.

Canada is known for being polite – what happened to us?

I do want to give props to the Winners employee however, she was putting out clearance and told me if I waited a few minutes, a bag similar to the purse I was looking a would be on the rack (it was $20 cheaper so score) and gave me a big plastic bag so I could more easily carry my stuffed cut and torn purse.