Talk to the Hand : The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door, by Lynne Truss

Isn't it fun to complain about rude people? It's especially fun to complain about rude people in front of other people, many of whom probably find you quite rude to be doing this.

That's essentially the problem with Truss' follow-up to "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." It's a slim volume listing the six reasons Western society is going to hell. This is a very British book, in the sense that the stereotypical Brit is all about stiff-upper-lips and being a doormat. That sort of behavior has, Truss says and I tend to agree, largely gone by the wayside: the favored phrase when faced with a polite (or any other kind of) request is "Eff off!" Only of course in real life it's "Fuck off!" I have found that phrase rolls right off the lips of lots of people in England, though it's less frequently heard in stores and everyday interactions here in the States. So far.

But the attitudes are the same on both sides of the Atlantic: the bloodyminded employees who can't be bothered, the endless phone trees customers are forced to navigate, self-checkout...

...which is where she lost me. I like self-checks. No, I love self-checks. It may have to do with the fact that at the local grocery store, the employees are fucking horrible in terms of rudeness; I'd rather be beeped at by a machine. But, no, I just trust myself to ring up my own groceries more correctly than I trust other people. Does that make me rude??

Oh, fuck off.