h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I work in a hospital. For some reason it is significantly easier to be polite to my patients than it is to be polite to the dummy in the car in front of me.

No, I don't feel more sympathetic for the patients (well, sure, I do, but that doesn't seem like the reason). Somehow, when I'm at work, I do a little bit of acting. I act like a real person; a nice, congenial person. That's why I'm exhausted when I get home. Dozens of rude patients (who have every right to be rude: late office visits, physical pain and fear), but I'm nice all day (basically). At the end of the day, whew!, time for a brew! Being polite and rigidly friendly is tiring. Being thoughtless is easier. People are generally lazy or selfish, so being thoughtless appears to be the default for most behavior I encounter. And when you aren't considering the way folks around you feel, you're being rude. People at work generally HAVE to think about how their clients/patients/cutomers feel, so being rude is a professional liability.

Friar

I do an average kind of office job, and I have to second your point that people, by default, are thoughtless. Our office is huge and open plan, so all noise really travels down it. Yet people still leave their mobile phones, so-called comedy ringtones set to loud, at their desks or in their coats, to ring unchecked. Possibly the worst offence is people using their speakerphone to have a conversation or listen to their voicemail.

Recently a "working group" was set up to tackle these problems, and improvements have been seen because people have been made to think about what they do. But there are still a few offenders, who get slapped down by their neighbours.

The worst thing is the queue to get out at hometime. We're all part of the same queue, so you'd think we'd all be able to let people out in turn. No. It turns into a fight. I try and let people out, just because I'd like them to do the same to me.