I hate “false” behavior in people. I work in what I deem a service industry. I do mostly phone tech support and in house web support and design for the company I work for.  This means that all day I talk to friendly folks from all around the country, in Canada and in Europe.  Should be fun, fun right?  Well, normally I don’t mind talking to nice people.  I find that 98% of the people I deal with are what I would consider “regulars”, meaning they call in frequently.  We sort of know each other on a voice and name basis.  I have been with the company going on 10 years so I know a lot of their voices and names well enough.  These folks know my name and voice too. My rant today concerns what they DON’T know about me.

I know people on a whole like to be politically correct, but it just really chaps my ass when someone asks me things like “How are you today” or the more pertinent, “How was your xmas”.  They don’t really want a 15 minute diatribe on how my life is going, and I really don’t want them knowing anything about my personal life. I mean, do they really expect me to start spouting off what a wonderful holiday I had?  No.  They could really care less and they want, nay, they expect me to just say a short “It was fine” and be done with it.  They pay for a service and should get that service in a polite and courteous way.  I want to give them that.  People should just drop all the pretence and get on with it.

I write this only to express my sorrow that we have fashioned for ourselves such social cages that we feel it necessary to be so fake and callous towards other people.  I don’t mean to say that we need to drop ALL our social protocols and I certainly don’t mean we should all suddenly be rude as hell to one another, quite the contrary.

We can all be polite without having to ham it up.  That’s all I am saying.  In my opinion it’s almost as bad as lying to a persons face.