Who Decides What’s Polite?

By Janita Le Grange, Editor.

We all have an invisible referee living inside our heads, constantly blowing a whistle at every turn.

You sit down to start working, and immediately the whistle blows: a phone call comes in. You handle that, sit back down, and whistle—time to cut hair, drive to school, and crawl through total traffic chaos because the road is under repair. Then this happens, then that happens, until you reach a point where you’ve lost your time, your motivation, and your sheer will to carry on like this.

Working from home sounds peaceful until you actually try to do it. Interruptions happen in a regular office, sure, but at least your colleagues don’t stand in your doorway asking, “What’s for lunch? I’m hungry and I can’t find my shoes!” on repeat.

So where do we actually draw the line and decide what is polite?

Do I lose my cool and shout, “Find your own shoes!”? Do I smile sweetly and say, “Just open the closet and you’ll see them where they belong”? Do I abandon my desk to go dig through the cupboard myself, or do I just sit there and ignore the whole scenario because I am trying to work?

Who decided that shouting wasn’t polite, anyway? Personally, I love a good shout. It silences the referee in my head and fills my lungs with fresh air. And who decided that saying please and thank you was mandatory at all times? Can’t I just nod my head and say, “Yes”—like I’ve earned it?

I don’t think good manners are about following a rigid set of written rules. It’s about being kind, being friendly, sometimes losing your mind for a second, but picking yourself back up and just being human. We learned manners from our parents, who learned them from theirs, going back so far that half of those original rules probably don’t even fit our modern lives anymore.

So today, I choose my own rulebook. I choose to shout about the shoes, tell the referee to jump off a cliff, say please and thank you when I mean it, eat my chocolate all by myself without sharing, and read Issue 32 of The Pineapple in absolute peace and quiet—hiding somewhere no one will ever find me.

Welcome to Pineapple 32, where we decide what is polite!