Are people getting ruder?

Kristen: Nat, we’re talking about rudeness today, because I have a few stories, and I know you felt like you were at the tail end of a couple of rude emails last week. So we’re talking about what is socially acceptable and unacceptable these days, based on our own culture, social norms, and perspectives.

Nat: It’s so interesting you say that about our own social norms, because I don’t think this is a minefield to get into, but I do think we all have this idea that rude is a subjective label. What you might find rude, I don’t find rude. Email is a primary example — some people find it really rude not to have pleasantries and a bit of fluff, and other people find that really annoying. Those are just two different perspectives on rudeness. So I wonder if people are actually getting more rude, or—

Kristen: It could be age. It could be aging and generational differences.

Nat: Yeah, okay.

Kristen: Every generation is more rude than the previous one — that’s generally accepted.

Nat: Yeah, the next generation is never as rude — every older person complains about the next gen. Although, side note — I’d suggest that often when people get older, they get ruder, and meanwhile they complain about everyone else being too rude. So true.

Kristen: I was listening to Al Pacino’s podcast — I love this, it’s called The Interview, it’s New York Times — and, well, actually, I’ve got the wrong actor, it was Sean Penn. Anyway, he’s freaking brilliant, but he has zero tolerance. He was saying he can’t stand getting to a supermarket checkout and the person’s fumbling around with the register. He’s apparently been written up as relatively rude for an older, famous actor, and he was describing these “unacceptable conditions” to the interviewer, who was like, really? You’d just be kind and let this person figure out their job. And he said, I cannot handle incompetence. So fair to your point. But I wanted to tell the story because I do think there are some universally accepted norms in a given country, where when they’re broken, it’s like, whoa, that’s odd, it stands out. Case in point — two travel stories, just got back from Melbourne, and this happened twice. Once on a tram, a group of three got on, really noisy, chatting loudly amongst themselves so the whole car could hear. Then one of them gets on the phone and has this big drama about who’s getting an invite to a wedding — couldn’t tell which wedding — and now the whole car is privy to this conversation. Eyes were shooting back and forth like, this is unacceptable. Not ideal, sitting there having to listen. The second time was yesterday at the airport — travel is notoriously bad for rude behavior, like when you don’t wait for the people in front to get off the plane first and just bustle down the aisle—

Nat: Or the baggage carousel, where everyone’s rammed up the front.

Kristen: Oh my gosh, okay.

Nat: Travel really brings that out.

Kristen: It brings out the worst in people. Anyway, this person waiting to board was not only having a loud phone conversation, but had it on speaker so you could hear the whole thing. It was, like, “Bro, I’m so — you were really down, and look at you, you haven’t had a drink in however many…” — turned out to be counseling a recovering alcoholic, in the middle of the gate lounge. And I just thought, this is so obnoxious, it’s in-your-face rude.

Nat: Do you think there’s been a change in how we live our lives? Because as you were talking about Sean Penn, I was thinking — the flip side is, how often am I at the supermarket, wanting to buy some deli meat, wearing headphones listening to a podcast — I’ll take one earbud out, pause the podcast, and have the conversation with the person. But I think it’s equally, if not more, common these days that people just leave their podcast or music going and don’t interact — just say what they want with the headphones still in. I was also thinking about Uber drivers — service has become so different. We hate QR codes on tables where you have to download an app just to order. But then we’re also in these public spaces a lot more where you hire an Uber and think, oh god, do I have to talk the whole ride to this stranger, when I actually want to do some work? So I wonder if we’ve created these new spaces where we don’t really know the rules, and with things like headphones, everyone’s just in their own little world in public now, and it’s created these rude situations.

Kristen: Well, and even when you bump into someone, or you’re on a collision course — I’ve been guilty of this — face in your phone, walking along the pathway. People can’t stand that.

Nat: So rude. I also find it rude when I’m trying to run — running is hard work — and I’m fine giving way for a buggy or someone in a wheelchair, there’s a hierarchy of people you move around for. But when it’s a whole flock of people who’ve taken up the entire pavement, looking right at you while they keep walking at you, I find that so rude. It’s selfish.

Kristen: Or a man taking up — that’s the act of micro-misogyny, I think, not microfeminism, let me correct myself there.

Nat: Anyway, Sean Penn’s known for being a grumpy old man, we didn’t understand that reference either way.

Kristen: Yeah, it was Sean Penn, but the things he was describing were just everyday occurrences where you’d normally give someone grace, and he had none. He described it as mastery — “I’ve had to hone my mastery as an actor.”

Nat: And you kind of end up a hypocrite there — I’ve noticed this especially with some older men — they’d never judge themselves as being rude, but they’ll judge everyone else who doesn’t meet their standard as rude.

Kristen: Research has shown people are incredibly rude to people in customer-facing roles, and I think there’s a sense of entitlement — if you’re paying money somewhere, you expect a level of service because that’s their job. I sometimes think about receptionists at doctors’ or dentists’ offices, or school receptionists, and go, why do you do this job if you hate people? There’s an expectation — I have to have mastery over my role, why don’t you? That’s not to excuse abuse, there are genuinely horrible situations people have to deal with. But that’s roughly how he was describing it — an expectation that people in their jobs should do a good job.

Nat: It’s funny you say mastery, because quite a few female actors have come out recently talking about method acting — like, “ugh, only men get to be method actors, because no one else has time for that.”

Kristen: What is method acting, exactly?

Nat: It’s when they embody the character all day, every day. And the point being made is no woman has time for that — someone else has to bag your groceries for minimum wage while you get to have that kind of time to “master” your craft. Definitely — was it Anthony Hopkins?

Kristen: That’s definitely Anthony Hopkins. But also my favorite actor — oh, what’s his name, is it Welsh or Scottish — gosh, I’m blanking — he was in Peaky Blinders—

Nat: I don’t know.

Kristen: I’ll find it — it’s fine, people can look it up. He’s been in a lot of Christopher Nolan movies, he was in Oppenheimer, the main character—

Nat: Oh, I know what he looks like, but I don’t know his name.

Kristen: [Cillian Murphy] — yeah, you got it. During Peaky Blinders he lived with that Liverpudlian, or whichever, accent for months. Chose to.

Nat: He chose to.

Kristen: Okay, I want to read out our LinkedIn poll — I was curious how our followers felt about social norms and rudeness, whether they’ve been deteriorating. It was interesting how you described your own social contract, Nat — that in public, ordering things, maybe having pleasantries on a plane or in a queue, the social contract now is one of isolation, phones in, earbuds in. Anyway — social contract pet peeves: 50% said phone out during a conversation. I’d add to that — those Apple Watches drive me crazy, because they’re even worse, with the wrist buzzing constantly. You’re trying to engage with someone and they keep glancing at their wrist.

Nat: I know exactly what they’re doing.

Kristen: Because their wrist lights up, and I’m like, I know what you’re doing. I find it so rude.

Nat: It is rude. I think it also reflects on your brand — it shows you’re easily distracted, not managing your presence well. I used to find it rude, and now I’m like, sort yourself out, that’s embarrassing.

Kristen: Why are we wearing our phones on our wrists at all?

Nat: You can wear one, but if you’ve set it to vibrate and then respond to every vibration, that’s a you problem — you need to manage that.

Kristen: Someone tell me the benefit, I don’t get it. Cancelling at the last minute — 20% said that was their pet peeve. 23% said emails that never get a reply, not even an acknowledgment.

Nat: Agreed — that’s become a socially acceptable norm now, not replying to emails.

Kristen: 6% said, nothing, people are fine, chill out — okay, Karen. There was also a comment saying speakerphone wasn’t even one of the voting options, but it’s an absolute pet peeve — particularly enduring long train commutes in the UK, having to listen to conversations around you. It wasn’t just the volume, it was the assumption — that everyone else should be part of your conversation too.

Nat: Or that you just don’t care. It’s the same as playing music out loud. I’ve noticed, living on the city fringes, when I have suburban friends or family over, they’re so nosy about the neighbors — constantly, “oh, what’s happening over there?” And I’m like, in the city you learn to respect each other’s privacy, you don’t peer over the fence because you don’t want them doing it to you. It’s interesting that suburban people don’t have that same instinct.

Kristen: Well, I’m also not a fan of public shaming. There was a Facebook post in my community group — “Love, Ohiro Road, love that you’re having back-to-back socials this weekend, I’m all for you having people over, but if I have to hear Lynyrd Skynyrd one more time—” and then everyone chimed in saying they were also enjoying the music, which was pretty funny.

Nat: I think that’s also generational and cultural — I don’t really mind if someone’s playing music, even if it’s not to my taste, up to a point. But I do find it rude if it’s blasting on a train, or at campgrounds, those are big for that. My dad has zero tolerance for any of it. I also noticed this myself — I was out with my professional board of directors the other night at a nice restaurant, and I noticed our noise level creeping up and up, and I thought, we are the problem. Sometimes I’ll mention something, but other times I’ve been in enough restaurants with a loud group that clearly doesn’t realize, and you just feel slightly uncomfortable and think, well, what are you going to do?

Kristen: I recall being a teenager — and this kind of gets at a universally accepted social contract, which is when you’re actually penalized for the behavior. I wonder if consequences are being removed. When I was about fourteen, we were on a train and the group I was with was really loud — I had secondhand embarrassment about it, similar to how you felt the other night, awkwardly looking around, not really joining in. We got off the train and were stopped by an undercover policeman, and everyone was given a noise violation ticket, except when he got to me he said, “you weren’t chatting,” so I was the one person who didn’t get one — first time ever I wasn’t chatting! Anyway, a researcher’s been tracking rudeness since the late nineties, and about a quarter of people reported experiencing rudeness back then, and that number’s gone up every time she’s asked since. The biggest change is customers behaving badly towards staff — frontline workers say it’s noticeably worse now.

Nat: Can I argue the customers’ side for a second? Because I think organizations have created a kind of mastery in looking past their customers. There’s a chart I’ve seen that tracks how, from the 1950s, a company’s stated purpose was to create value for customers, and every decade since it’s been more and more extrapolated, until now it’s essentially, squeeze as much money as possible out of people. With things like automated phone systems you can never get through on, customer support scripts agents can’t deviate from, outsourcing to call centres with very little ability to use initiative — you end up with these nameless, faceless corporations hiding behind low-paid frontline workers with no autonomy. I think sometimes companies create the exact conditions that make people take it out on those workers, because twenty years ago, none of that really existed to the same degree — you’d call a business from the phone book and probably get someone who was actually on the team. Now it’s all become so commercialized you can’t get the support you need anymore.

Kristen: That drives me up the wall too. Sitting at a table the other day, close to a hundred dollars for two burgers and two beers, and needing to order it all via QR code. I said to my husband, I refuse, I’m not going on that website, I’m not using that technology, so we had to go up to the counter, and of course the staff were a bit miffed, since they just want everyone ordering via QR code. And in situations like that I think, why am I being made to feel like a Karen? I don’t want to be annoyed, I just don’t want to use a QR code — we’re paying a hundred dollars, surely we could get table service.

Nat: Well, and that’s where I think the conditions for rudeness can be created before the person who ends up being rude ever enters the picture. QR codes are a great example — we’ve decided to use them to cut our costs, not our prices, so we’re delivering a lower-quality service for the same price, and then we’re surprised when people get annoyed. That’s not even an unintended consequence, it’s an obvious one. Same with the switch to AI customer support — there’s a tool we use where we have to email support in a particular circumstance, maybe once a week, and every single time the same bot reply comes back with completely wrong information, and I have to go back and forth three times before I reach an actual human who says, sorry, I’ll sort that now. I’ve politely said the last two times, could you update your bot process, because I can’t be the only person hitting this — I’m a paying customer and you’re wasting so much of my time without charging me any less, you’re just making the process harder. I think our tolerance has shifted because of that — and I’ve noticed the same with Powrsuit. On the rare occasion someone cancels a membership, the request is never rude exactly, but it’s very formal, legalese, abrupt. And we’re like, what? We’re really friendly, we never screw anyone over. It’s like they’re pre-empting a fight, because they expect it to be hard. And then as soon as you respond as a human — of course, we’d never charge you if you don’t want to stay — the whole tone of the conversation changes. So I think a lot of rudeness now comes from an expectation that things will be painful, so people front-foot it.

Kristen: Two other causes I was thinking about — the lowered barrier to being rude, especially digitally, keyboard warriors. It’s much easier to be rude from behind a screen than face to face. And the second, related thing, is increasing polarization — Twitter, Reddit, debating things online, we’ve become incredibly angry at each other and further apart. Even with reels — depending on the algorithm, you get served everything that supports your existing point of view, but when you’re accidentally served something from, say, the manosphere, and you want to respond — I can see how people get pulled in. I’ll start typing a reply and then think, whoa, I don’t want to go down there. So I think polarization, and the sheer ease of being rude, have both changed.

Nat: I think it comes back to that social contract thing — two hundred years ago, you were surrounded by your community, so there were checks and balances. You couldn’t be rude to your butcher because he was your neighbour, probably your friend. Now it’s a total stranger, so there are fewer checks and balances — you might have one uncomfortable interaction, but it won’t affect the rest of your life. And with technology, it compounds — like one of our favorite rude things, ghosting and cancelling on meetings. There’s no pushback. You send a one-line, sorry, couldn’t make it, something’s come up, and you move on with your life. All the consequences fall on the person receiving it, who now has to rearrange their schedule, but you don’t see any of that. Same with cameras off in meetings — you don’t feel the social consequences. The cost has shifted onto the recipient and away from the person being rude. In the past we had social structures that kept people in line because you actually felt the consequences.

Kristen: What worries me about that is when something we’d have once agreed was rude stops being treated as rude, the norms themselves shift. That’s where generations struggle — when the actual norms move. We’ve talked before about hiring processes, people going through multiple interviews and then never hearing back — you’ve invested an enormous amount of time preparing, several rounds of calls or in-person meetings, and then crickets. Sadly, I think that’s become a norm that isn’t coming back, because most people have just accepted how transactional and high-volume it’s become. And conversely, I’ve heard young candidates ghost employers too — if a better offer comes along, or they just don’t feel like it, that’s now accepted in reverse as well. So my biggest concern is that norms have genuinely moved, and that’s why we sound like the older generation going, “I remember when it used to be better.”

Nat: I do think some norms have genuinely moved — I’d put the hiring one down to platforms. We’ve removed the friction so much that five thousand people can apply for the same job through some system that automatically rejects 4,990 of them. There’s no human left in the loop, it’s all about extracting value at the lowest cost rather than adding value — which makes me really grateful we’re working in Powrsuit, adding humanity and value back. I’ve got a couple of norms I’ve noticed, because Kyla’s Gen Z, ten years younger than me, and there are some really interesting differences. One is hosting — if people are coming to stay or for dinner, I’ll clean the house top to bottom. Would you?

Kristen: Yes.

Nat: She wouldn’t — she’s like, it’s casual, people will just turn up, what’s the problem? Also, if someone does something for us — like, someone dog-sat for us recently, and I felt I needed to give them something, like chocolate—

Kristen: Reciprocity — you just do it.

Nat: Exactly, and she’s like, what? It’s just a friend, they’re coming over. And if our parents say something, I feel like it’s our job to plan things around it, and she’s like, they can figure it out themselves. It’s really interesting, what a “job” of hosting even means. My parents’ generation would have formal sit-down dinners, and mum would find it outrageous that we’ll just order takeaways when people come over — but they’d also always bring a jar of jam or flowers, whereas I think that’s a bit overkill now. I do think we’ve just casualised a lot more.

Kristen: We’ve casualised. To that point — I recall handwriting thank-you notes for wedding gifts, baby shower gifts, early in our marriage, and now those have turned into thank-you texts. We still do a thank-you text, but—

Nat: That’s a really quick one.

Kristen: Yeah, it’s interesting. One thing I was thinking, when you talked about the burden falling on the host, or the person waiting for a reply — it’s become increasingly easy to say yes, and increasingly expensive to actually follow through. We see people saying yes, yes, yes, yes to everything as a matter of process, and then when it actually comes to it, we’re all so loaded up with back-to-backs and other responsibilities that following through has become genuinely expensive.

Nat: I wonder if it’s always been that expensive to follow through, and it’s just become cheaper to cancel — you don’t have to call someone and say sorry, I can’t make it, you can just send a text. So the cost of cancelling has gone down.

Kristen: Agreed. But I do think COVID broke us, in terms of keeping your word — it really did break a lot of good norms there. That’s not to say I’m not glad we’re progressive, there’s so much that’s great about modern society, but I am sad about some of those changes.

Nat: I asked you earlier if you’d read a certain book, and I think we probably sound like those people — “let’s go back to traditional values, live on homesteads.” Highly recommend it, actually — anyone want to do a book club with me on that, I’d love to discuss it. On the wedding gift thing — I had friends stay at my holiday house this weekend, I wasn’t even there, someone else organized keys and everything, and one of the guests followed up with a text the next morning saying thank you and some really lovely things. It was shocking how unusual that felt — whereas I feel like that would have been the norm back in the day. You can really stand out now just by sending a quick thank-you message, because it’s genuinely not that common anymore. I know if my parents had friends over, they’d call and thank them afterwards — that’s not really a thing anymore, is it?

Kristen: No. When I used to visit my dad, I’d leave a bottle of wine and a thank-you card — I wouldn’t do that now. I’d send an email instead. His generation called those “bread and butter letters” — the ones you’d write after staying somewhere. Now it’s all digital. But I should point out — that researcher who’s tracked this since the nineties found that nobody thinks they’re the rude one. People explain away their own bad behavior as being “stretched,” and don’t count it as rude — a short, sharp email gets explained by “I’ve been under so much pressure, I’m so stretched,” which is often true. I do think the world has sped up, and all the noise coming at us from every direction has sped up with it.

Nat: There’s a name for that trick our brains play — where we justify our own poor behavior but judge other people harshly for the exact same thing. That feels like a really classic example here. Sean Penn’s a good one too — I’m sure he sometimes forgets to look up when someone walks into the room because he’s mid-task, and he’d call that mastery and focus. But when someone does the same to him, it’s a problem with them. I love Hamish and Andy, the Australian comedians — they have this bit where people can ask them for a dollar in public, but what it really means is they can never go anywhere without being watched and judged, since they’re celebrities. They even have a segment where people call in to complain about how the pair haven’t lived up to their on-air personas in real life. And you think, isn’t that basically what would happen to the rest of us if we were actually being monitored all the time — I’m sure we’re all ruder than we realize, we just justify it as, I was having a bad day, I was a bit grumpy, I was stretched. I know I’ve been guilty of exactly the things we’ve talked about today — forgetting to take my headphones off, or just not thinking it through because it was easy, like, “can I have some chicken,” and moving on, and then afterwards thinking, what an ass. Now I make a point of politely greeting Uber drivers — for a long while I was in such a routine I’d barely acknowledge them, not through malice, just not thinking it through. You forget the humanity so quickly.

Kristen: Agreed. Okay, we’re wrapping up — do you have a tip or insight to share, Nat? Mine is that if you manage people, what you tolerate becomes the norm. So I think it’s important, as a team, to reintroduce small rituals that make it slightly more delightful for people to be there and feel part of something — cameras on if that matters to you, a certain tone in replies, what’s acceptable and what’s not, showing up to meetings on time versus late, greeting each other in the morning, small celebrations now and then. If you manage people, what you tolerate becomes the norm. I think we can claw some of this back — people leaders, do your thing. What about you?

Nat: I heard a really good tip from a great restaurant manager here in Wellington — we did a talk with him once. He said whenever he hired someone, he’d sit somewhere else in the restaurant, in a dark corner, and watch them walk in — watch how they asked for him, how they treated the bar staff, how they behaved when they didn’t think the manager was watching. He said you can rule people out really quickly that way. I think the tactic we can all apply is asking ourselves: if I were being watched right now by someone I deeply respected, or felt was socially or hierarchically above me, would I behave exactly the same way? I think about that with checkout assistants, with customer support calls, with Uber drivers. We worked with a fantastic woman CEO once who made a point of thinking about the window washers — how would you behave if this were someone not in a socioeconomically lower position? It sounds a bit odd, but I do think we subconsciously sort people into who we feel we need to be more respectful to. I heard someone recently justify sending a really grammatically sloppy email to a teacher with, “oh, it’s just a teacher” — and I thought, you’d never send that to your manager, so why is it okay to disrespect someone else that way?

Kristen: Agreed.

Nat: I’d like to end on one final thing — the email reply we got to our newsletter a couple of weeks ago. It was on conversation starters for people who hate small talk. This was the literal email we received, from a man we’d never heard from before, don’t know him at all: “Seven of your suggestions failed your first rule.”

Kristen: Full stop. Didn’t even sign off.

Nat: I replied saying thanks for getting in touch, I’d love to know what your conversation starter is — and yes, we did have a disclaimer in there that some of those were meant as literal opening lines you’d follow with a second one. Never heard back.

Kristen: Do better.

Nat: Do better! Such a lovely, warm world of people who reply to our newsletters and podcasts with beautiful insights and their own stories and encouragement — and then every now and again we get that, and you just think, wow.

Kristen: Absolute smackdown. Check out powrsuit.com, everyone, and please reach out to us — do you have any pet peeves, have we been over the top? We’ll catch you all next time. Bye.