More to the manners???

As is often the case at lunchtimes, i nearly always end up having to wait in a queue. I'm not overly bothered really - after all, queuing is something of a national past-time in the UK. Hell, there's a whole culture and etiquette of how to stand and behave in a queue that's sprung up around it. But I digress. As I was waiting, I was indulging in my usual hobby of people-watching (and listening) and something struck me as rather stand-out. Namely, the way that many of the customers (if not all of the ones in my immediate vicinity) were speaking to the workers. Out of the many people in the queue, I would swear that I was the only one who uttered the words please and thank you, as my sandwich was being prepared (this was in the Subway queue, i should add). Everyone else seemed to enjoy communicating in short, terse sentences. Not only was there a lack of any politeness what-so-ever, but the tone of voice often used was not particularly pleasant either - there were those who were generally talking down, those who were speaking to the workers as if they were talking to a child and so on. Given that i know what it's like to be on the other end, i find it rather annoying in the extreme.

As I stood there growing more incredulous at the minute, it did strike me that there might be more to this than meets the eye. Aside from the 'talking down to a person who is perceived as a lower class of worker' that might be the obvious explanation, I did wonder if there actually might be some basic racist aspect to the whole thing. Y'see, the majority of workers behind the counter were hispanic or african-american. Ok, now i might be over-interpreting (having recently taken a course in Diversity issues, this is rather on my mind at the moment) but also remembering that this is the South, and so this subtle racism doesn't seem too much of a stretch. Indeed, its certainly something that i've commented on before. However, this is often the hardest mindset to change. After having to endure this for merely a few moments in a queue, it felt like there's an awful big mountain to climb.