How do you personally deal with rudeness in your life?

Question

(Credit goes to Dharma for giving me the idea for this question)

All very good answers. I can't decide, so I'll let you all do it.

Answer 1

I don't deal with rudeness. If a person feels the need to be rude I wouldn't react at all. If I were to react I would only be adding to the overall negativity and I would also be giving my power to a rude person.

FP

Answer 2

If you ignore it you don't have to deal with it. By ignoring it you give the person who was rude a way out of their dilemma. And you don't waste your energy trying to come up with a snappy reply or getting even.

The real problem that most people confronted with rudeness are concerned with is their potential loss of social status, that is, how others who witness the rudeness will judge them. Will they be seen as weak? This is what usually drives people into confrontations that they would otherwise avoid.

I say that anyone who would judge you as being weak by ignoring the rudeness is not someone you could trust to behave in a like mature manner. Let them think any silly thing they want. Find some new friends. You are the valuable one, not them.

Answer 3

I ignore it. If someone is being rude to someone else I will just look at that other person and wink or something just to let them know I know the other person is being rude.

There are a lot of crabby people in the world. I've learned to flick them off and not to let them get to me.

Occasionally I may make an example of them and put them in their place...I have to be in my low tolerance mood for that however and believe me you don't want to be on the receiving end.

Old people are often rude, and I tend to ignore them, but feel sorry for clerks or whomever are on the receiving end and aren't really emotionally equipped to understand or deal with people like that. I keep thinking someday I may be old and losing my marbles too so I try to have a little patience but some old folks are 100 percent crab you just can tell. What good is it going to do to beat them down...you'll probably just send them into some kind of whacko mode.

Answer 4

Depends who it is and the degree of rudeness involved. If I am walking in or out of a store for instance and the idiot in front of me doesn't even try to hold the door till I get hold of it or purposely slams it on me I may say something like"Some people raised their kids with manners" (no matter their age) or if they truly didn't see me behind them I would say nothing. If someone takes a parking space I'm waiting on and they have seen me waiting and I have my signal on I would holler out the window at them "What the world needs is more a**holes...thanks for stealing my place" or flip them a bird. People that are going 10 miles UNDER the posted speed limit (not a delivery truck as they may be looking for an address or street) I will yell"The gas pedal is on the right". Someone who doesn't use their turn signal I will yell "You would think for $25,000 they would include turn signals" or "Doesn't that model come with turn signals?" or "Were turn signals an option on that model?" Fortunately I don't run into too many rude people on a daily basis. If I accidentally cut someone off while driving and they curse at me or flip me a bird I stick my tongue out at them. This pisses them off cause I didn't get mad. When I worked at a place where I had to answer the phone all day and people were rude I would tell them "If you continue to be rude (or cuss) at me I will hang up and if they did I did. If it's a family member I will usually tell them to go F*** themselves and continue on with what I was doing.

Answer 5

I do my best to ignore it - there's no reason to be pulled down to their level.

However, sometimes, you just have to say something, and call the offending party out, because what they've done is NOT okay. For example, I was in the drugstore the other day, on my way to the checkout, and this woman quite literally shoved past me, almost knocking me into the magazine rack to get ahead of me in line (I had a bottle of Advil - it's not like it was a giant cart full of stuff)!

I couldn't believe how rude she was to push me, so I took a good long look at her and politely said "Excuse me! Was I in your way?" She didn't say anything back, but I know she was embarrassed, because she turned about six shades of red.

Answer 6

I either say something completed random to them so they get confused, ignore them or even scream. They have no idea what to do.

Once I was buying something from a department store and the person who served me was pretty rude, didn't say a word to me nor say thank you after I paid and collected my goods.

Instead of getting angry, I just said to her 'I love cookies and milk, they're so yummy' in a retarded tone and then quietly walked away. I'm 25 years old. I'll grow up one day.

Answer 7

Now that my dear depends on the circumstances and the mood I'm in at the time. I tend to have alot of patience toward senior citizens and would probably let them get away with all kinds of rudeness. lol But people my age are likely to get a response equal to or above the rude comments or actions they inflict.

Answer 8

I try to look at it with compassion. Most things that I perceive as rude are actually a situation where my expectations for the experience didn't match up with the other person's expectations. If I try to figure out what their expectations were, I can understand what happened better.

Answer 9

Depends upon the level of rudeness. I'm not afraid to defend myself, but I try not to have a hair trigger. In general, I always remember that I am responsible only for myself and how I conduct myself. In short, I first make sure I'm living according to my values and not being rude to anyone.

About the strongest response I've had to give during the past year was telling someone, "You know, if you'd take your head out of your a__, you'd have a clearer view of reality."

Answer 10

I live in the South, so I rarely come into contact with open rudeness. Rude people here are a source of ridicule, so you almost have to pity them. Usually they end up moving away before too long.

Answer 11

It really depends on the situation! If someone is calling me a name I just say " I am sorry you feel that way, but I will not stoop to your level." And then I walk away

Otherwise if I am at like a store and the clerk is being rude I try and convince myself I am on boiling points on MTV (have you seen that show? they try to make people reaaaallly mad and if they don't lose their cool they get money.) But, of course it never turns out to be true, I never hear "You have just won $100 by being on MTV boiling points!" Stupid TV show. So I just reward myself for being so calm : 0 )!