How rude can you be?

I'm curious... To what depths of discourtesy have you each sunk?

Personally, I think my record is telling a door to door salesman to fuck off, but every federal election I surprise myself with how I treat the people who hand out how to vote cards.

It's unconstitutional and it's insulting, but in their minds they're fighting the good fight, so they wear such smug grins as they hand out pamphlets telling you how to vote. It's fucking outrageous but apparently acceptable.

Anyways, last time I just growled at them. That was me being restrained. This time around I waved them away with a disgusted expression, as though they were flies. That was me being tolerant.

So, despite demanding courtesy from others, I think I must be the rudest bastard ever, unless any of you can admit to doing better... I mean worse.

 

Typical behavior of a Greens supporter. The rudest I have been usually involves breaking up with ex girlfriends.

 

That deserves an answer and here it is:

Fuck you, fascist.

Also, how do you break up with an ex girlfriend?

Nah but seriously, fuck you, Zanza.

 

I was once walking down the street with a friend of mine and my younger cousin, who was probably about six or seven at the time. I had to bring her to stay in my house, for a few days, and needed a friend to help because of the staggering amount of bags that the kid had. We had to rush, a little, if we wanted to make the bus on time, and, dragging several heavy cases with us, we moved as fast as we could, with me ushering the kid. We were obviously in a hurry.

Enter idiot. One of those fuckers who stands on the street and stops you to ask you to give to charity.

'Hey guys, got a couple of minutes?'

Now, we were in a hurry, with me trying to move the kid along and constantly glancing at my watch and moving as fast as possible, but I thought this finely crafted piece of stupidity warranted a stop.

'... Do we fucking look like we have a couple of minutes!? What the fuck is wrong with you!? We're dragging three suitcases, two bags, and a kid behind us, rushing as fast as practicable, and you ask if we have a couple of minutes? Fuck you. Even in more favourable circumstances, we obviously don't have any fucking money—look at us! Fuck you, you braindead shithead. —And yes, I'm aware of the irony of stopping for a couple of minutes to tell you what a gormless prick you are.'

Then we went home. I don't remember if we caught the bus.

 

Once as a rear-seated passenger with a group of friends stuck at a red light, I spied an elderly woman power-walking. She was a typical gray haired beach dweller, with visor sunglasses, and feathery cottonball hair, exercising in a lavender and marine colored track suit and generic white athletic shoes. She was probably less than 70 but older than 55, and she obviously took her health very seriously, you could tell by the pace she was setting for herself. As I watched her she started as a spec in the distance 2 blocks away and had become this stationary, calf pumping, pulse checker waiting for the light to change directly in front of my tinted passenger window. The cross traffics' light changed from green to yellow and I rolled the window down. Waving to her I told her I had to tell her something, she stepped off the curb and approached and I calmly told her "I saw you exercising, and I don't know why you even bother." She looked confused, I elaborated as our light turned green "you could walk forever but you'll never be pretty again."

 

Back in my crewchiefin' days, I shouted some pretty wild obscenities at my passengers. If only they could have heard me over the engine and rotor noise...

There were times when we would land somewhere to pick up a single passenger. Sometimes, that one dude would show up dragging three dudes worth of bags. I once stood there and watched a guy drag his bags a good fifty yards to the aircraft. I could have helped him, but we weren't in a hurry and I was feeling ornery, so I just watched.

I'm usually a really nice guy, buy bury me under thirty pounds of armor/flight gear on a hot day and my bullshit threshold drops to about zero.

 

Honestly you've made jokes on British peoples' over-indulgence in self restraint, but far from me being horrified by the stereotypical nature of your assertions for me they are actually quite true. I have had frequent visits from Jehovah's Witnesses in my city (the proportion of crazy religious types in a slightly rough city is always pretty large) and yet despite my dislike of their modus operandi and general harassment I've never said an unkind word to them. At most, if I'm in a bad mood, I'll be slightly clipped but I can't seem to bring myself to be truly cruel to people who are right in front of me.

Case in point, I've been working catering for an uncle who runs events around the country during the summer. Obviously we buy our pastries from supermarkets and display them; we're not a fucking bakers for Christ's sake. Now seeing as there was only about eight of us and in a day we would be serving normally over two thousand people, I'd set some pastries that I was going to display out on the side in the supermarket's packaging (priced £1.09) and got distracted with the sheer volume of customers and had to serve one. Of course, as soon as I did this someone snatched them up and believed that to be the price much to my total and unequivocal rage - not so much at them but just because the day had been so god damned busy.

As can be expected when I came to serve them and I told them the price including their drinks, they said "Are you sure, these pastries are only priced £1.09?" What I felt like saying was "Am I sure? AM I SURE?? THEY ARE IN A CLEARLY RECOGNISABLE BRAND OF SUPERMARKET PACKAGING, HOW DO YOU EXPECT US TO MAKE ANY PROFIT IF WE SOLD THEM AT PRICE?!? Moreover, MAYBE IF YOU HADN'T BEEN SUCH MASSIVE DICKS AND GRABBED THEM FROM THE COUNTER WHEN THERE ARE CLEARLY OTHER OBVIOUS PASTRIES ON DISPLAY THAT HAVE BEEN SET OUT NICELY THEN I WOULDN'T BE IN THIS FUCKING POSITION IN THE FIRST PLACE." But what I actually said was something very similar albeit infinitely more polite and vastly devoid of said rage. The fact that I lead this story with the phrase "case in point" reveals two things; one, that I exert quite a lot of restraint when necessary, and two, that the problems of an Englishman are usually aggrandised and unimportant.

Having said that, I do think the British stiff upper lip is more or less entirely fictitious and that the usual response of a broad swath of middle class people is to act in a similar unfortunate and self-deprecating fashion.

 

Re:

Classic Greens response.

 

For the record, I vote against my enemies, numbering the candidates from last to first, and I always remember exactly who my enemies are.

 

That's pretty good. It'll at least confuse the counters if you ever spoil your vote by adding your own candidates.

 

10 metres away.

 

I'm a weird hybrid of verbally polite but socially rude. I'll avoid making eye contact with people who try to talk to me, ignoring them for as long as possible. When conversation becomes unavoidable I'll be terse and resentful, but the actual words I say are never rude ones. Like, I've never told anyone to fuck off, but when they use the standard opening "How are you?", and I don't feel like co-operating, I'll reply "Yes" which in some ways is worse, because they have no idea how to follow it, and so it hangs in the air while we both feel stupid.

The receptionists at my last job thought I was arrogant because I never said good morning to them when entering the building in the mornings. The fact is I never said good morning to my co-workers either, but I guess the receptionists had no way of knowing that, and assumed I was ignoring only them, because I thought they were beneath me or something.

The whole "holding the door open" thing annoys me, because I generally walk faster than anyone else, plus I reckon that anyone who plans on walking through a door is prepared to open it as part of that process, so I don't really see why I should be expected to hold it open for them just because I happen to get there first. I mean - if someone is right behind me or in front of me, then I'll hold the door open wider as I walk through and then give it a little push, so they can catch it more easily. I'm not a monster.

Both of the above things conspired against me one time, when one of the receptionists was outside the building inspecting a delivery of milk, just as I approached the doors. Since she was standing motionless with her back to the door, reading a receipt, I just went past her as if she wasn't there. Apparently she chose that exact moment to turn around and move towards the door, and found it swinging shut. I know this because she later cornered me in the kitchen and berated me for my rudeness. She said "I suppose you think it's funny to slam the door in my face?" Evidently she thought I had telepathically intuited her intention to turn around and then not held the door open deliberately. Being verbally polite, instead of saying "What the hell are you talking about, you self-absorbed nutcase?" I said "Err... no."

After that I found a different way to get into the building in the mornings that involved walking all the way around the back.

That's probably not the most discourteous that I've ever been, nor is it the only time I've been called out for being rude, but it sticks in my mind because I honestly think in that particular situation I was not at fault.

 

That's not a weird hybrid at all. I generally go the same route, but I'm never quite as impolite. If someone asks "How are you?" I generally respond with single words such as "Okay" or "Fine", but would never follow it with a "What about you?". Resentfulness and a general air of annoyance will take you a long way.

However, whenever I find myself in a situation where I'm so furious that simple "polite" rudeness won't suffice, I tend to be unable to find the right words, or indeed any words. I believe the low point of my career in impoliteness was when I (at the age of 6) called my (white) classmate a "nigger nazi". I'm not sure if I knew what either of the words meant at the time.

 

I only ever have the opportunity to be a rude butt over the internet, and while I can't recollect any particular instance in which I have acted exceptionally in this manner, I'm sure there are plenty of poor souls out there still trying to soothe their giant ice burns left by me. And my run-on sentences.