Whatever Happened to Class?

"Whatever happened to fair dealing?
And pure ethics
And nice manners?
Why is it everyone now is a pain in the ass?
Whatever happened to class?....

Whatever happened to, "Please, may I?"
And, "Yes, thank you?"
And, "How charming?"
Now, every son of a bitch is a snake in the grass
Whatever happened to class?"

-From the musical "Chicago" by Fred Kander & John Ebb


Don't be misled by the title of this post or the above-quoted lyric. I'm all for vulgarity. I have a passion for fart gags, Helen Keller jokes, and movies like the classic 80s flick "Moving Violations" (in which a senile old lady accidentally uses the men's room and afterward wonders aloud, "Why is my back all wet?"). Yup. Tasteless farce holds a special place in the cockles of my heart.

However -- and of course there is a However....

There is a proper setting for the distasteful. What I'm talking about here is a different animal entirely. In our everyday lives, in our common interactions with other people, whenever we encounter the authentic, it is a call to respond with civility. Or, at the very least, with a little bit of class.

Today on the train home from work, a middle-aged woman boarded the packed car. Noticing that she was having a hard time finding something to hold onto for support, I stood and offered her my seat. "Would you like to sit, ma'am?" I asked -- and I'm not trying to sound like Polly-effin'-anna here: this is how I really talk to other people in real life.

By way of reply, she looked me in the eye, caustic, and said flatly, "NO."

What cut me so deeply is not necessarily that she declined my offer. What struck me was that there was no "thank you" trailing that acid NO. It is, admittedly, a tad sensitive (and more naive than I care to ponder) that I would actually be offended -- or even surprised -- that this person didn't say "no, thank you" to me. But this is just one example in a little game I play with myself, called, for lack of a better term:

"Classed or Sassed".

The rules of "Classed or Sassed" are simple, in case you too would like to play this version of human solitaire. Throughout the course of a single day, go about your business as you normally would, and just take note of how many times people respond with even a modicum of class, or, barring that, a hiss of sass. The instructions are very black and white: every reaction you get will fall into one of the two categories of the game. There are no gray areas.

For example, another episode from my own life. I always hold the door for people. If someone acknowledges this gesture and says "thank you", that means I've been Classed. On the other hand, if someone completely ignores me, as if expecting that the door should of course be opened for them, well, that would qualify as being Sassed. At the end of the day, the sad, sometimes devastating, outcome of the game is that there's typically a lot more sass on your tally sheet than class.

So this begs the question, Whatever happened to class? I was raised that if someone did something nice for you, you thanked them. Not a tough concept, really. Yet apparently for a lot of people it is. Regardless of the act, be it a transaction at the grocery store, a stranger letting you exit the elevator first, or a server bringing your food out as ordered and without a globber of spit, a thank-you is compulsory.

If you would've asked me just a few short months ago, I would've been adamant that this behavior was Boston-centric. Only Bostonians, I'd say, act this way. But this was simply hardened denial on my part, a protective layer if you will. It is not just Boston that forgets to say please and thank you. It's the entire world. While I agree that geography does play an inexplicable, important role in how nice someone is, the fact remains that jackasses don't have their own zipcode. And I fear the classless are taking over the world.

With that being said, I will tell you the places I've encountered where people are the classiest:

• Whole Foods. The sexy punk boys and girls working the checkout always, without fail, say "Thank you".
• My local mom-and-pop convenience store. The dwarf with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth always lisps his grateful thanks.
• My dentist's office. These people are the best. They make me believe in the goodness of humanity, which is, you must admit, a strange thing to encounter at a dentist's office.

And here are places you'll find those enemies of class: the sassers:

• The MBTA. These people are paid quite handsomely, and they despise themselves, each other, and the human race in general. Be content if they don't close the door on your prosthetic leg or push you down a flight of concrete steps once you've passed through the turnstyle. And, by some freak miracle, you may one day encounter a trainee who has not yet read their manual, and you might get a thank-you. Should this happen, contact the MBTA immediately and tell them. They never hear this. Ever. They will be baffled with this new feeling of pleasure. But don't expect a response...because that would be classy.
• Roadways, subway cars, and buslines. The vast majority of commuters would rather eat your liver than let you in their lane, or move their bag so you can sit down. They hate you and want to fillet your children. Trust.
• Airport security checkpoints. TSA employees make about as much money as the neighborhood homeless man that rifles through the trash on garbage day looking for cans to take to the redemption center. Add to this the fact that TSAers are under contract to the government, giving them a "superiority" over us common folk. And when you combine low wages + bloated sense of power, you get Sass in the extreme. Don't expect a please, thank-you, or have-a-nice-day from these people. Consider yourself blessed if they don't haul you off to Guantanamo. I even once had a TSA "official" warn me about traveling with my husband because John forgot to take his keys out of his pocket before passing through the metal detector.
  

Now it's your turn. Play the home game of "Classed or Sassed" and see how well you fare.

I wish you luck.