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    I can’t forget the rude woman in the polka-dot dress. But now I know the cure

    AnyFans Posted on

    By Julia Pound

    Copyright smh

    I can’t forget the rude woman in the polka-dot dress. But now I know the cure

    Lately it seems as though rudeness is being pumped into the air and we’re all absorbing it through our pores. Grown men are assaulting teenage wait staff, school principals are reporting ever-increasing rates of verbal and physical abuse from parents, and every doctor’s waiting room has a sign reminding people not to behave like animals. Sometimes, I find myself thinking wistfully of the before times when the rules governing rudeness were very different. Swearing at strangers was permissible, but only from the safety of your car with the windows safely wound up. You could call someone a tosser if they dared jump the queue at the supermarket, but only if you said it under your breath, with no vocal cord involvement. But those days are over.

    Before I began my current career in education, I owned a clothing shop. When you run a business like this, you meet all flavours of human behaviour from the pathologically polite to the ridiculously rude. Fortunately, my interactions with the latter were so infrequent that I can still recall most of them a decade later. There was the customer who proudly informed me that “my five-year-old could have made that” about a pair of handmade earrings. There was the man looking for a present for his wife while eating a mayonnaise-drenched sandwich who fingered every piece of clothing in the store. But the wooden spoon for worst customer goes to the woman who came to the shop to return a polka dot dress after an overnight change of heart.

    The dress looked terrible on her, she told me. Just terrible. She demanded a refund, but I informed her in the politest way possible that, in line with store policy, I was unable offer a refund for change of mind. I reassured her that I would be more than happy to give her a credit note for a future purchase. It was at this moment the woman’s eyes turned black and a purple vein started to pop on her forehead.

    “Well, seeing as you refuse to give me a refund, why don’t you just keep the dress AND the money. You look like you need it.”

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