The Chick-Fil-A Way

I must confess: I'm a sucker for good manners. To me 'please' and 'thank you' go a looonnnngggg way. But it seems like no one knows that anymore. I was recently at a store and after checking out, I was not thanked for shopping at XYZ. So I said to her, 'thanks for letting me shop here'. She looked perplexed as if to say 'um ok'. I was floored. Really, I can't even get a 'thanks' even if it is forced? It got me thinking about how manners really have gone to the wayside.

A few years ago, my husband and I went to an out of state wedding. Because we were traveling, I ordered a gift from the happy couples registry on line and had it sent directly to their home. Approximately one month after the wedding we received a picture card in the mail. You know the kind that people send out at Christmas, the whole family dressed alike and it says 'Happy Holidays from the Johnson's!' This picture card had a picture of the happy couple at the alter and on the side it said, 'thank you from the happy couple'. I was FLOORED. Thank you for what? Our travel to get the wedding and all the other expenses that go with it? For our gift, which was delivered to your doorstep and to this day I still have know idea if you received?

I was appalled.  And Miss Manners would be too.

What happened to hand writing out a personalized thank you to EVERYONE who came to your wedding? I did, I had wrote hundreds of thank you cards after my wedding. And since I have been married previously. I've done it twice! My mother would have been HORRIFIED and EMBARRASED if I did any thing less. I was raised better than that! Apparently the happy couple, was not.

So are we raising a generation of people who cannot say things like please and thank you? Geez, I hope not. Over the last year or so I've been working on my own manners which I'm sure, at times, are just as atrocious. We tend to take for granted the people we see every day and say thank you. But I'm working on that. And I learned it from a fast food restaurant. Every time I go to Chick-Fil-A, I am so impressed by the manners of their employees, whether they are teenagers or adults. They always say 'my pleasure'. It pleases me that it's their pleasure to serve me a chicken biscuit. Crazy, right?! So I adopted the Chick-Fil-A way of manners. In the last year or so, I've started saying 'my pleasure' as well. If someone thanks me for holding a door open for them, I respond with 'my pleasure'. And you know what, it really is my pleasure. It is really so hard to show my fellow humans a little common courtesy? No it really isn't. I just hope that my kindness and expression of manners will start a chain reaction of others showing a little kindness and manners to others and that somehow it will make it's way back to me. Is that too much to ask? I think not.

Thank you for reading! I really do appreciate it!

Wendy