BOO! BOO! BOO-YA!

I can’t count how many times people have said to me, “But I deserve it!”  So many times when I talk with people, I perceive this huge sense of entitlement, which flows off them in gigantic waves.  And, I think I’ve seen most of it since I moved here to South Park, so patently obvious.  Silver heads, at least a lot of them, take it for granted here.

What is it with people?  What makes them entitled?  What makes them deserve ‘it’?  Even I have used that term over the course of my 61+ years of age, like buying myself a little treat when I got a raise when I was in ‘The Big Job’, because I worked hard for that raise and I deserve ‘it’.

 

Recently, on a luxury coach outing to the big city of Toronto with a local organization, I got to experience this sense of entitlement first hand, up front, in my face and I have to say, it left a really bad feeling in my mouth. 

The bus was departing from a local mall uptown from me, about a 20 minute drive away.  Having grown up in a house where one of my parents (my dad) was a punctuality fanatic, I was brain-washed from an early age, to always being about 15 minutes early, wherever I had to be; school when I finally got to start kindergarten; then when I started dating, yep never did figure out the ‘Keep ‘em waiting’ philosophy; then when I started working, especially my first ‘real’ job after I got out of high school. If I wasn’t at least 15 minutes early, I would start hyperventilating, especially when I wasn’t in charge of my mode of transportation, i.e. public transit to downtown Montreal, working in a lawyer’s office as a court runner/file clerk and couldn’t control the speed of the train I was on or the bus I got onto after the train. 

                                                   

To me, being on time, is the epitome of respect.

Anyhoo, I digress.  On a recent Saturday morning, here’s a bus load of 44 people, plus the driver, sitting and waiting, sitting and waiting.  I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for until a person of importance in the group finally got on the loudspeaker at 8:26 and mentioned that we were waiting for a couple and asked if we should leave now or give them 3 more minutes, which would mean an 8:30 a.m. departure, instead of 8:00.   Since we had already been waiting for almost an entire half hour, a lot of the bus people felt, “So what’s another 3 minutes?”  This tardy twosome finally arrived right on the nose of 8:30. Yay for them – NOT.  

I don’t know what the other 44 people did while we were waiting for this tardy twosome, but I spent the time figuring out how much time these two tardy people wasted on behalf the 45 people, who were there on time.  Let’s do some math – you probably won’t even need to drag out your smart phone and find the calculator app.  Forty-five people x .5 (half) of an hour.  That’s a collective 22.5 hours!  or almost one full 24 hour day, waiting for two people who thought our departure time was 10:00.  Huh?

So because of two people who couldn’t get their act together enough to make note of the correct departure time, 45 other people paid the price.  AND when these two people finally made it onto the bus, they didn’t even apologize to the 45 people they had kept waiting.  What’s all that about?  Why is it their due that we had to wait for them?  Does their poop not stink like the rest of the bus people?  What makes them so special that they just ignore the social niceties for keeping 45 people waiting and not apologizing?  Why did they deserve to have a bus load of people kept waiting for 30 minutes?  And, I guess, more to the point, why did the trip organizer allow that to happen?  

This tardy twosome appeared to be totally bewildered by some of the bus people who actually booed them (and not in a ‘Casper, The Friendly Ghost’ kind of way) when they finally boarded.  Although, I admit, booing is (somewhat) bad manners on the Boo’ers part, I applaud them for their courage in expressing their unhappiness to the people who caused the situation.   After all, don’t people who have been kept waiting for the tardy two deserve to express their opinions? Judging by the expression on the tardy twosome’s faces upon hearing the booing, they had no idea why someone would boo them.  Where did they learn their manners? 

Maybe they’ll say something later, at the restaurant where we were all lunching together? 

Nope, not even then and that would have been a perfect opportunity for them to do so.  It, at least, was quieter than the bus and stationary.  During the course of the day it became obvious to me that these two people were totally oblivious as to having done something wrong, which required an apology, probably because they’re special in some way I have yet to figure out.

I grew up in a family where you worked to accomplish your goals.  They weren’t handed to you on a platter.  Where you weren’t praised for every act you so cleverly achieved and which seems to be the way a lot of kids are being parented these days.  Get up, get dressed and go to school  - oh what a wonderful person you are, Ashley!  Thank you for doing that.  Seriously?  What happens when they grow up and start working?  Is the boss going to applaud them on a daily basis for doing what is expected of them?  “Oh, Ashley, you got to work on time today.  Thank you so much!”  What are we setting our children or grandchildren up for by praising them to the moon and back for things and actions that should just be?  Let’s get real.  Life just isn’t like that, unless you’re your own boss and then you can pat yourself on the back as many times during the day as you want BUT will it pay the bills?

So for all those people out there who think that they deserve to have 45 people sit and wait for them, I say “BOO”.  And for the ones who enable people to have this sense of entitlement, I say “BOO”.

One day, that something that's going around, will.  BOO-YA!