People With No Manners & Zero Concept Of Etiquette Often Do 10 Tacky Things
Bricolage | Shutterstock Bad manners are often rooted in a basic misunderstanding of how to present yourself around other people. People who were raised in households that didn't emphasize respect or etiquette might struggle with basic manners, since they were never taught to be considerate of others in social settings.
People with no manners or etiquette often do some tacky things in polite company:
1. Interrupting people
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It's totally normal to interrupt every once in a while, especially when you're overwhelmed with excitement about a conversation topic. The polite thing to do in that situation is to acknowledge the interruption, apologize, and pause, so the other person can finish what they're saying.
The British School of Excellence distinguished between manners and etiquette. As etiquette expert Philip Skypes explained, "If you are respectful to others, then you are more likely to be treated with respect by other people. If you show good manners everywhere you go, you will be more than likely to encourage good behavior and good energy and amazing connection with people."
Jumping into a conversation before the other person is done talking is a show of bad manners, but it's not catastrophic. An interrupter can easily remedy their misstep by saying, "I'm sorry, I interrupted you. Please finish what you were saying." By owning up to the interruption and waiting their turn to talk, they fix their mistake and hold themselves accountable, which is a sign they're more than ready to shed their bad manners for good ones.
2. Leaving dirty dishes in shared spaces
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It's one thing to leave a half-empty coffee mug on the table when you're rushing out the door in the morning, but it's something else altogether to let stacks of moldy dishes pile up in the sink until they spill onto the counters and take over your entire life.
It's possible that people with bad manners who don't do their dishes have parents who never taught them the value of cleaning up after themselves. Maybe they were raised in a chaotic environment, where surviving the conflict and instability of their household was prioritized over keeping a clean kitchen. Maybe their parents enabled their bad manners by doing everything for them. This well-intentioned parenting move not only sets kids up for learned helplessness, but it can also affect how successful they are as adults.
Dr. Williams, a pediatrician known as the "TikTok Kid Doc," revealed the unlikely benefits of giving kids household chores every day. He cited research from the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which analyzed the way early childhood events affect people later on. The study reported that children who do chores grow into happier adults.
A study from the University of Minnesota supported the results of the Harvard study, noting that assigning kids chores was the best predictor of future success, especially if they start those chores at a young age. "Having your children do chores gives them a sense of self-worth, and it helps them to realize that they're contributing to a larger ecosystem," Dr. Williams explained.
3. Listening to music in public without wearing headphones
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Just because you want to hear your favorite sad bop on repeat doesn't mean the strangers you're sitting next to on the subway want to hear it at all, let alone 12 times in a row. Technology has allowed us to carry endless amounts of music on a phone that's really a tiny computer living in our pockets, but playing music without headphones when you're not alone is a display of very bad manners.
4. Not thanking someone for a gift
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People with bad manners might not inherently know that acknowledging a gift with a thank-you note, or at least a text, is the kind and gracious way to respond. It's possible that their parents or caregivers were absent or uninvolved, and they were left to fend for themselves in a household defined by neglect. Without an adult to model proper behavior, they didn't learn good manners by example.
We hear a lot about gratitude as an entry point to a mindful existence, but we can't establish that practice without a baseline understanding of how to be a generous, warm person. As licensed clinical social worker Dr. Terri Orbuch explained, "Having an attitude of gratitude will improve your relationship/ A very vital factor in any happy relationship is gratitude; making a person feel valued, loved, and supported with simple acts and behaviors."
5. Cutting in line
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Purposeful line-cutters make this move because they don't want to wait while everyone else in line is waiting for their rightful turn. These poorly mannered people believe their time is more valuable than anyone else's, a mindset that reveals how entitled they really are. Patience is a virtue, as the saying goes, but people who cut in line don't have that trait. They do have a disregard for other people's needs. They have a sense of superiority that they use to justify their disrespectful behavior.
6. Monopolizing group discussions by only talking about themselves
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Sometimes, socially awkward people struggle to grasp the flow of a conversation. Their social anxiety bubbles up, and suddenly they're telling everyone about the goldfish they won at a fair in fourth grade, but the bowl slipped from their hands and smashed on the pavement, and that's how they ended up losing the only pet they ever had.
Other times, self-centered people with a deeply entitled attitude will dominate conversations as a power play or because they only care about the sound of their own voice. Their bad manners ripple out to the rest of the group, so that a conversation that had been balanced and joyful becomes an insufferable one-man show.
People with good manners know that every conversation has a rhythm to be followed. They know that asking questions and sharing their thoughts is important, but listening is even more so because being attentive shows how much they care.
7. Not covering their mouth when coughing or sneezing
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It's one thing for a toddler to sneeze into their mom's mouth because they have no spatial awareness and slow reflexes, but it's a whole other gross, rude thing to just cough or sneeze out in the open as a fully grown adult. It's shocking to think that anyone who lived through 2020 would cough or sneeze without a barrier, as though the pandemic was a collective fever dream and germ theory was proven false over a century after its discovery.
Bad manners can be categorized as behaviors that overlook other people's needs, which creates a sense of discomfort. A person who's faced with a free-sneezer can employ their own good manners to triage the situation. They can politely ask the other person to cover their mouth next time and offer them a tissue or a full-on medical mask, while they're at it.
8. Not letting others know if they're running late
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Lateness is a hardline issue for many people. Some believe lateness is the ultimate act of rudeness, while others see being late as an unfortunate but forgivable time-management issue. According to research from Harvard Medical School, running late could be a positive trait, at least for the late people themselves. The study reported that people who aren't punctual are less stressed than their time-conscious counterparts. They're calmer than people who get to brunch 15 minutes early, and this innate sense of inner peace can increase their life expectancy
While this medical insight offers benefits to people who can't get places on time, it doesn't cover why they don't just send a text that says, "Running ten minutes behind, C U soon," to smooth over their bad manners.
9. Scrolling on their phone during conversations
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According to divorce attorney Ronald Bavero, scrolling on your phone during conversations could have serious implications for the future of your relationship. He described a behavior that exemplifies bad manners: Phubbing, a combination of the words phone and snubbing, which is "the practice of ignoring one's spouse or romantic partner to pay attention to one's phone."
Bavaro cited research reporting that Americans spend an average of 7 hours and 4 minutes on their phones every day. They spend this screen time making calls, sending texts, watching cat videos, and using social media, and not looking their partner in the eye as they talk about their day. "Studies found that spouses who phub each other experience higher rates of depression, resentment, and isolation," Bavero shared. "While phubbing, in and of itself, may not directly lead to divorce, it certainly can become the tipping point that pushes the relationship over the cliff."
10. Being dismissive to waitstaff
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You can learn a lot about someone by how they treat the people serving them. People who speak down to them and act in a dismissive way reveal that they have terrible manners and they were not taught how to behave growing up.
Having an impolite or outright rude attitude with someone who's trying to make a living by serving a person a meal they didn't cook is the pinnacle of bad manners. Their utter disrespect reveals what they really think of people working in those particular positions. Treating service workers poorly is an indication that a person has a big ego along with bad manners, and they definitely weren't taught proper etiquette as a child.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
