Public civility, or lack thereof

Yesterday in the Boston Globe, one of my favorite authors published an op-ed that really struck me. Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked and The Ugly Stepsister) rambled on a bit trying to draw parallels between the story in Wicked and modern day life. I was drawn to this particular statement:

"Now I find the lack of civility and the evaporation of respect for different points of view to be rampant all over the political spectrum, including the soapbox I comfortably occupy."

This pretty much sums up the discourse on one local blog as it relates to a special election happening here in Eastie. However, I would add that this lack of civility is not just found in political discourse, but in every day life.

Yesterday morning (after reading Maquire's piece) I was at the bank. While I waited for my banker to make some copies of something for me, I could hear a conflict brewing at one of the teller windows. Before even turning my head, a young woman started screaming at the supervisor, accusing the teller of being disrepectful to her, cutting her off, etc. She began throwing the f-bomb around like it was going out of style. The branch manager had to stop what he was doing to tell her that such language and behavior will not be tolerated. As it turned out, whatever this young lady needed could not be done at the teller window. Having just been to that teller just a few minutes before, I must admit that I refuse to believe that the problem was with the teller. More likely, the irate customer was overworked, overtired, stressed out, and obviously short-tempered (giving her the benefit of the doubt - she may have been just a bitch).

I too share Maguire's lament in the lack of public civility. I guess the question is, what do you do about it. In this case, the branch manager and teller supervisor stood their ground in insisting that the customer not harass or otherwise mistreat the teller. On the blog I referred to earlier, the blogger has started moderating comments and refuses to post any that include personal attacks. I think more like this needs to be done to impose some modicum of civility back into public life.