A question of manners

[luckyprincess]

I grew up in a small town in the US in Kentucky. My parents drilled in the you always say your pleases and your thank yous, but every time I go north, I get looks for saying these things and some big cities. In the US, it seems very cultural as to whether or not you say anything.

That's so strange for me to hear. I grew up in NJ and lived in NYC. Can't really remember a time that I've seen overt rudeness out and about. I can't imagine someone giving strange looks for you saying those basic simple everyday terms. Most likely it was the accent they were reacting to - we don't get to hear those accents a lot.

[misty57]

That's so strange for me to hear. I grew up in NJ and lived in NYC. Can't really remember a time that I've seen overt rudeness out and about. I can't imagine someone giving strange looks for you saying those basic simple everyday terms. Most likely it was the accent they were reacting to - we don't get to hear those accents a lot.

Either that or people are thinking to themselves.." how nice, I should have remembered to be polite too".

[jacketwatch]

We were on a Celebrity cruise last week and will be on a RC one next week. There were a lot of passengers from USA on board and I noticed that a large number of them did not say "please" or "thank you" when talking to the wait staff particularly with the servers in the WJ cafe equivalent.

 

We found all the passengers on board very friendly and courteous towards other passengers with very little pushing or queue jumping when getting on/off the ship/buses/tenders (unlike our experience with other Europeans on our MSC cruise in May). The overall friendliness of the passengers and crew contributed to this Celebrity cruise being our best cruise to date.

 

Was my perception incorrect or is there a cultural difference in the way crew are spoken to akin to the difference in tipping policies? In fact are these related i.e. in the USA do you show your appreciation using tips rather than verbally?

I think there is no correlation at all. How you act towards the crew reflects the person and not the culture. Is there one culture which treats people in the service industry more politely than other cultures? Actually I would think if there was it would be here as we have no historic roots to aristocracy, caste, class structures, nobility, titles and so on. Our roots are quite the oppposite. JM2C