Last week, I sat down with some doctors in Humboldt to talk about the shortage of professionals like themselves in this community. When the topic of how the public can help them out both while they are short-staffed and in order to keep doctors in this area, the subject of courtesy came up.
If people called to cancel their appointments instead of just not showing up, was one point. Another was not waiting until 3 a.m. to take your non-urgent medical condition up to the emergency room, prompting a wake-up call to a physician who has to get up early to put in a full day of appointments and caregiving the next day.
Listening to the stories of people's discourtesy towards these doctors - not all people, they were quick to say, but enough to give them a variety of examples - it really struck me how discourteous we are becoming as a society.
In discussing this topic with some friends, one told the tale of a person behind her in line at a local store. He hadn't waited five minutes to take his items through the checkout when he lost his temper, threw down his items, and stormed out of the store, saying something like, "I don't have time for this crap."
No time? Really? If there was a fire, or your basement was flooding, and it was a dire emergency, I can understand having that feeling like if you don't move now, you're just going to expire on the spot. I have been there. However, it still doesn't help the situation to make a scene and storm out when you could simply explain to the people around you that your house is burning down and do you think it would be possible if you could go next to buy this hose, so you could put out the fire?
I'm sure most reasonable people would wave you to the head of the line, if that was the case.
If you're not in the store on an urgent mission, and are simply impatient in line, there is no excuse for not being able to wait five minutes. If the lineup was really long and was taking hours to move, you could complain about it. Or if the clerk was clearly wasting time, talking to a co-worker about the weekend, or texting on their phone (grrr) then you have a right to be upset. But it isn't always best to treat discourtesy with discourtesy.
We all have enough problems in our lives without having to suffer the rudeness of others for no apparent reason. If we were perhaps all a little nicer to each other, if we offered a smile instead of snarl, or understanding instead of complaints, I think it would make all of our lives a little bit better.
I'm not asking for utopia.
I don't think that's really possible in today's world. But maybe if we thought more about how much what we say and how we say it impacted those around us, we wouldn't be so discourteous.
Maybe if we thought for a moment, when it's 3 a.m. and we have a belly ache, "Is this worth waking up a doctor for?" then we would have more doctors around here long-term. Maybe if we dropped that attitude of: "You're a doctor, you get paid big bucks, when I show up at the emergency room at 4 a.m. because I stubbed my toe, you'd better run over," some doctors wouldn't leave here as quickly as they can.
Maybe other people would stick around, too.
I'm not saying Humboldt as a whole is an unfriendly community. It's not. There are wonderful people here who say all sorts of nice things all the time, who make sure to tell others that they appreciate what they do. But we often only retain the negative comments we hear and forget the positive, so the small majority of complainers and whiners are the voices many people hear in their heads.
Maybe it's time to switch that around. We'd all be happier. And maybe even healthier.
