An Old Man Rants

Okay, so I'd like to not sound like a grumpy old man, but what's with kids these days? Does nobody teach them the basic manners of existing in the world? I'd very much like to collectively scold the parents who raised the current generation of young adults.

Very often it's on the bus that I observe this rotten behavior on the part of young adults, but sometimes it creeps over into the workplace itself. Cases in point:

• Last week, I found myself surrounding by young working people on the bus, each of whom was wearing ear-bud style headphones for their i-pods, but each of whom was playing the volume at such high levels that everybody around could hear the music clearly. What in the world this was like inside their heads is anybody's guess. Do these kids actually imagine that the rest of us need to hear their music, too?

• Next to the bus, a car driven by a young man pulls up. Windows are down, the better to boom out hurricane-level bass tones from huge speakers mounted inside his car. It is deafening to everyone one the street, even to passengers sequestered behind closed bus windows. WTF! If you want to blow your brains out with hip-hop music, could you not at least close the damned car windows?

• A frequent happening, on the bus and almost everywhere these days, is the young adult who thinks nothing at all about having a private cell phone conversation in crowded places, where the details are impossible for the rest of us to avoid. I'm hear to tell you that if you riding the 4F downtown bus, you just are not important enough to annoy the rest of us with your stupid phone calls. Save it until you get off the bus, already. Older folks seem to have some sense of decency about public phone calls——most of us turn off the phones when in crowded places, or we seek an out-of-the-way corner to have the conversation. No so with the youngsters. They are just too self-important to consider other people.

• And finally....today I arrived at the office to find a young female coworker painting her toenails a bright shade of scarlet....seated in the company lunch room.

Honestly, folks. Feral children raised by wolves have better manners than this crop.