Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas

by Celia Rivenbark

  Look, the Princess does plenty of stuff that I never talk about because, at the end of the day, I know that (1) it sounds braggy, and (2) nobody but her parents and closest relatives give a shit. That’s the smell test for this stuff. Every time you find your fingers wanting to bang out a quick status update that “Donnie Jr. had the highest grade on the spelling test!” know that your friends think that’s kinda douchey. Actually, very douchey.

  Even Donnie Jr. thinks so. And he’s fairly certain I misspelled douchey.

  Question: I’m not sure how I feel about Facebook’s If I Die app. It seems kinda morbid and creepy to actually leave behind statuses for your friends to upload after you die.

  Did I not just tell you that I don’t like the word “app” unless it involves gooey melted cheese? I didn’t? Well, I meant to. That aside, I agree that it’s creepy, though not necessarily a question of etiquette. One of the benefits of being dead should be that you no longer have to fret about shrimp forks and thank-you notes and all the stuff that the mortal world has to deal with every day. No, no. You should be safely ensconced on your puffy white cloud with your only worry that white was never your best color and now here you have to wear it for, like, eternity.

  The question is a good one: Is it good manners to speak to people when you’re technically dead? The answer? Yes and no. The way this works is that you approve three “trustees” to post your posthumous message(s). This prevents hackery such as the vengeful ex-spouse pretending you’re dead and, really, you’re fine but on your honeymoon with the new guy, probably posting obnoxious pictures of your toes in the foreground. So, it’s nice that there are safeguards in place. Your friends will know when they get your status update that you are, in fact, dead as a mackerel.

  I’d say that it’s mannersome indeed to leave behind a brief, kind message for those who knew and loved you.

  If it’s more on the order of the old “I told y’all I didn’t feel good,” well, that’s a bit lazy, now, isn’t it? Hence the “yes and no” response.

  Remember that fabulous old movie, My Life, in which the dying dad, played by Michael Keaton, records a video chock-full of fatherly advice for his kid so that, after he’s gone, the kid can still have input from his dad? I always thought that was kind of sweet.

  Look, we’re all going to die, so we might as well cobble together a message of comfort and joy for friends and family. It’ll make them feel good, and what could possibly be more mannerly than that?

  Here are some posthumous status-update ideas to help you get started.…

  Advice for the living:

  • Never buy cheap ice cream. Seriously, it’s so worth it to spend the extra money. Trust me; I got no dog in this fight anymore, so why would I lie about this?

  • Read the classics. I did, and now I’m dead. On second thought, read whatever the hell you want. And watch more TV. They don’t talk a lot about Nathaniel Hawthorne up here, but Duck Dynasty? All the time. Seriously. I couldn’t believe it either.

  • Don’t smoke. Maybe a little weed now and again to take the edge off, but not cigarettes. The doctors told me that smoking was a “major contributing factor” in my “stage 4 lung cancer” and now I’m “dead” and missing the Super Bowl because the rest of the cloud wanted to watch Downton Abbey on PBS. Wait a minute. Maybe this is hell. The cloud thing had me fooled for a minute.…

  • Treat others as you want to be treated. Simple, old-school golden rule stuff, right? But it’s so true, living people.

  chapter 20

  Annoying Chatfest on Aisle Five: Common Manners Mishaps at the Grocery Store

  The Hungry-Man frozen Salisbury steak dinner with mashed potatoes and fudgy brownie was squished between two jumbo packs of toilet tissue. Alone. Abandoned. Cut from the herd and left to drip to death in a very weird place.

  I’m not saying it needed a Sarah McLachlan soundtrack, but it was a sad sight sitting there all soggy and wasteful just because somebody was too much of an assweasel to put it back in the freezer after deciding not to buy it.

  Even normally well-mannered people drop all pretense at the grocery store, where those of us who are high-strung, or under ten, behave worst of all.

  My least-favorite grocery store memory happened many years ago as I witnessed a boy who looked about four years old scream at his exhausted mother: “I hate you, I hate you, and I’ll always hate you!” It was chilling, and not just because we were standing at the freezer case, where her offense was to deny him the largest pack of freezer pops. I’ve often wondered what became of little “Damien” since that day at the A&P so many years ago. I only hope it didn’t involve telekinetically nudging the nanny out of a fourth-story window to her death.

  Question: My kids go with me to the grocery store all the time. How can I get them to stop misbehaving (running around the store, knocking over displays, screaming, and so forth)?

  Most of us resort to bribery. You promise the kids a treat if they can act less turdlike long enough for you to get everything on your list and back to the car. That said, it sounds like your kids are committed to making your shopping trip—and everyone else’s—a nightmare. For some reason, this seems to be less of a problem with the homeschooled families. Their kids always behave well at the grocery, perhaps out of fear that if they don’t, they’ll have to spend time out in the grain silo or wherever the hell these people really put their kids all day.

  Worst kid-in-grocery-store behavior ever: My friend Jana was in the produce section not long ago when she saw a kid about nine years old licking the grapes and apples, looking around to see if anybody saw him do it, and then putting them back. Because Jana is a mother herself, she yelled at the kid: “Hey! What the hell do you think you are doing?” At this point, the kid’s mom, who has been off to the side—buying fruit that hasn’t been licked by someone’s child—asks what’s going on, and Jana told her that her son was licking the fruit and putting it back on the display.

  “Hmm. Well, that’s weird,” says the mom. “Wonder why he’s doing that? Oh, well. What’re you gonna do? Kids!”

  Yes! Kids! What’re you gonna do? I dunno … leave his fruit-lickin’ ass home next time? Yeah, that works.

  Back to the original question, though. If bribery doesn’t work, you have to leave them home until they’re old enough to behave because, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, you and your brood are shaving years off my life. I have bruises from your insufferable spawn pushing your cart into my shins and a monster headache from all that screaming. Just remember: Contraception is not just a city in South America.

  Question: Why do people move so slowly in the grocery store aisles? It’s as if they’ve been drugged!

  I know, right? The grocery store is the native habitat of the genus Saunteringus malingerus. Keep the grocery cart in a forward motion, people. Do not amble along, blocking the aisles so you can gaze longingly at that Duncan Hines molten lava cake mix. I mean, I get that it looks awesome, but pull to the side, just as you would on the road. No, stupid. The right side. Grocery cart rules are the same as road rules: Stay to the right and don’t just park in the middle of the “roadway” and walk away. If you’re going to be gone for a while, tie a white paper towel to your cart.

  I used to think that it was just me who suffered from grocery store–induced “slow-walker rage,” but according to the Wall Street Journal, there are fifteen thousand members and counting in a Facebook group called “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head.” Likelikelikelikelike.

  Question: What do you think of these “extreme coupon” people who go to the checkout lane with two full carts and a coupon for every item? They tie up the cashier forever. Isn’t that poor etiquette?

  These people kinda freak me out, if you must know. They’re hoarding hundreds of cans of Manwich in their garages, pallets of Lucky Charms under their beds, and tubs full of Brawny towels in their guest baths.

  The problem is that it’s hard to talk about them
without coming across as elitist, out of touch, or even a little jealous of their mad couponing skills. Which I am none of these things. You can’t be elitist if you’re honestly upset that somebody’s hoarding the Manwich, right?

  If you’re giving a lot of your coupon megabuys to charity, then good on you. If you’re laid off and this is the only way you can make ends meet, then double good on you. But those who do it just for the thrill of buying two carts piled high with Right Guard for a nickel or so much Cottonelle that you have to back both cars out of the garage, well, you might have a problem. You don’t want to end up on Hoarders, Hoarding: Buried Alive, The Hoard Monsters or Hoarding Wars, The Passion of the Hoarders or Bayou Catfishing Hoarders Who Have Storage and Parking Wars or some such.

  I get that it’s kind of a rush. And while I think it’s cute that an extreme-coupon mom might teach her toddler how to count to one thousand by making him inventory the mac-’n’-cheese boxes in his bedroom closet, shouldn’t he be outside in the sunshine, blowing bubbles or something?

  Bottom line: Anything that inconveniences others to a great degree is always an etiquette violation. I would hope that these extreme types shop in the off-hours. If it’s 5:30 P.M., and you whip out a three-inch binder with plastic sleeves full of coupons for the 850 items in your cart to be individually scanned, I will go all Charlie Sheen on you. I mean the old Charlie Sheen who scared everybody a little, not the mellow, neutered version nobody much cares about.

  Question: I can’t stand being in the grocery store and hearing some idiot on a cell phone describe every single thing on the shelves. What’s up with that?

  Stop calling my husband an idiot. On his annual trip because I have anthrax or something, he’ll call precisely eighteen times to make sure he gets the right thing. It would be endearing if it wasn’t so craptastically annoying.

  “Hmmm. I see Minestrone, Cream of Chicken, Beef Barley, Chicken and Stars…”

  At the oatmeal aisle, he calls to tell me there’s “thick and rough, Irish, steel-cut, extra thick, rolled and organic with flaxseed, apple-tastic, one-minute, five-minute, cinnamon, weight control with fiber, heart medley, strawberry cream, oat revolution…”

  Tip: Keep your list very specific if you send someone to the grocery store who is unfamiliar with the layout. I have a friend who, in utter desperation, sent her husband to the grocery for Eagle Brand milk. He spent two hours in dairy before he finally asked for help. By the time he was steered to the baking section, home of the canned milk, he was a whimpering mess. “Milk. In cans? How?” is pretty much all he could say.

  Question: Why do so many shoppers think that it’s okay to block the grocery store aisles while they have a very long conversation with a friend or neighbor?

  I know what you mean. One time, I actually got the stink eye from two women who were visibly pissed that I’d interrupted their utterly fascinating conversation to ask them to move the hell out of the way so I could get to the Lean Cuisines. They were all, like, “I can’t believe how rude that was,” and I was all, like, “Tha’s right, bitches; shit just got real!”

  Okay, that didn’t happen beyond the part about the stink eye, which I did get when I simply said, “Excuse me, please,” forcing them to suspend their conversation, which involved a lot of one-up-yoursmanship as they compared their adult sons’ careers, lives, and families long enough for me to retrieve my 350-calorie Mandarin chicken. Which rocks, by the way.

  It would be a wonderful world if you could just get a running start and use your cart to slam into ’em like a bowling ball scattering pins, but that would be a huge violation of etiquette. Fun as hell, though.

  Soup to Nuts …

  • You know they make those freezer doors out of clear glass so you don’t have to open them and stand there and stare, letting all the food defrost. Don’t be a dick; look at the food through the glass door, make your selection, open the door quickly, retrieve the food; close the door. See how easy?

  • A word about the U-Scan. Usually there are two banks of these serve-yourself checkouts. Do you queue up on one side, or do you simply hover in the middle and grab the first one available? I prefer the latter choice because it’s a bit of a free-for-all in there, isn’t it? If you hover in the middle, you block both, thus assuring that you will have the first-available scanner. You’re welcome.

  • Don’t try to feed your entire family at those little food stations that show up in grocery stores on weekends or at warehouse clubs like Costco every day. Take one sample per station if you must, and make sure the kids don’t bogart all the frozen chocolate banana samples. Those are for my kid. By the way, I must warn you that it’s not a good idea to try all the samples, for one very practical reason. I once fell quite ill after mixing the frozen shrimp rolls with the portobello ravioli with the mini-calzones with the marshmallow trail mix with the spinach dip with the cheesy chicken loaf.… Just because it’s there and there’s a nice woman making it sound like that frozen hot dog and tortilla soup is going to change your life (it won’t), you don’t have to partake. Use discretion. Oh, and don’t throw your toothpicks on the floor or, alternately, chew on them the rest of the day. That’s nasty.

  • Put the damn cart back in the corral. Is it really that hard to do this? It must be, judging from all the grocery carts I see abandoned all over the parking lot. Sometimes it’s hard to park the car because Leonard P. Superdouche has just shoved the cart into a space instead of returning it to the corral just a few feet away.

  • A quick reminder: Don’t act surprised when it’s time to pay the cashier. Have your loyal customer card ready. Ditto your debit card. Oh, and if you’re still writing checks to pay for your groceries, please return home immediately. 1997 is calling.

  • Don’t you dare crowd me while I’m still waiting for my transaction to be completed. I’ve actually had to say, “Do you mind?” to a creeper. If you hover, I promise I will just go slower to piss you off.

  chapter 21

  Criminal Misconduct: How to Behave When Being Arrested

  Yes, even when breaking the law (or, in my case, being wrongfully accused of breaking the law—more on that later), it’s important to show that you were “raised right.”

  When I read about how even the Amish—the Amish—were misbehaving and breaking laws of civility, well, I nearly threw in the etiquette towel (which is made of painstakingly embroidered Egyptian cotton, it should be noted).

  When the Amish—a gentle people known for finely crafted furniture and inventing a stove that claims to heat your home for about thirty-seven cents a winter—start showing signs of misbehavior it really sets one back a bit.

  It turns out that the Amish have something akin to rival gangs terrorizing one another in rural Ohio.

  Where, oh, where are the mannersome men that Aunt Verlie raved about meeting on her church bus trip to Amish Country? A land where piecrusts don’t come frozen in foil pans? Where it’s a sin to boast about the quality of one’s apple butter? Where tourists learn to build their own “Amish friend” from wood scraps. Yes! All that and only thirty minutes from the nearest Tanger Outlets. Heaven!

  But now, the Amish, long insulated from the wretched excesses of American culture (zippers! cars! HBO!) have finally snapped and joined the rest of us in repudiating common courtesy. Big-time.

  Behaving like a button-flied version of Bloods and Crips, the Amish of Ohio are giving new meaning to the phrase “crazy quilt,” as they break into one another’s homes and clip one another’s beards off.

  What’s next? Carving gang symbols in the cornfield? The keying of buggies? The tipping of butter churns or (gasp!) accusations of “Thine mama!”

  Of course, not all Amish are acting this way. Just a splinter group of really pissed-off Amish who believe the enemy isn’t Amish enough. Night-lights on buggies? Heresy!

  The majority remain well-mannered and orderly, leading peaceful iPad-free lives. But those rogue Amish? They are harbingers of things to come. For, verily, when
the Amish “act ugly,” we imagine it will only be a short leap until the Jehovah’s Witnesses will not just show up in Sunday clothes at your door at o’-dark-thirty on Saturday morning with pamphlets. No, these perennially lovely and well-mannered folk will egg your house if you don’t answer. Could happen.

  Now, as for my own brush with the law, let me just say that it’s very, very important to be more polite than usual when dealing with the police.

  Politeness pays off hugely when pulled over (wrongfully!) by the officer with the blue light.

  The light came out of nowhere, as they always do.

  “Mommy, I think he wants you to stop,” said the Princess.

  “Nonsense, dear,” I said. “He’s probably after some miscreant. So many idiots can’t drive in this town.”

  And, yes, I did say “miscreant.”

  I had to admit it was odd how even though I traveled several blocks, he insisted on staying close (really, too close) with that silly light on.

  I turned onto our street and he did, too!

  He then motioned me to roll down the window and asked for my license and registration.

  I behaved as I always do in this kind of situation: as though I had a ton of weed and a bunch of illegal aliens in my trunk.

  The Princess was staring straight ahead, pretty much stuck between “mortifed” and “scarred for life.”

  “Do you know why I stopped you?” the officer asked.

  I remembered my friend Elle, who was so nervous when she got pulled over that she answered the same question with “No, Your Majesty!”