While at work, I encountered America's new found "hostility toward their fellow citizens," when a pair of customers reinforced the strength with which Americans, especially the youngest generation, are "privatizing the public sphere" (Maasik and Solomon 485, 486). I was working upstairs in the outerwear and footwear department at REI, helping outfit customers for trips and local activities, when a woman asked for my help finding clothes for her preteen daughter to go snowboarding. While her mother and I located jackets, pants, long underwear, and socks, the girl trailed us with an exasperated expression and talked on the phone the whole time! This blatant attempt to escape the presence of her mother and myself "effectively den[ied]" our "existence" and frankly was extremely annoying (Maasik and Solomon 485). Though I can understand, having been there once myself, the boredom and "uncoolness" of shopping with your mom as an adolescent, this girl's rudeness was uncalled for. What is astounding about the whole situation is how normal the mother and daughter both treated it. Talking on a cell phone while in public is now so accepted that children, who can't recall the days of landlines, don't even know they are being offensive in doing so. This same faux pas is repeated continually at the registers as well, when adults effectively tell me that I am less important than the voice in their phones while checking out. This behavior is demeaning yet somehow culturally accepted in America.
Maasik, Sonia and Jack Solomon. Culture and Contradiction in the USA. Signs of Life in the USA.Ed. Marcia Cohen. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 485-486. Print.
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