It Is Finally Time to Talk about the Rudeness

After Michael found this article, and after two years of delicate and diplomatic searching for explanations, I feel ready now to write about this subject. 

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/zijlijn/6153992/Friesland-pupils-get-lessons-on-manners

 It isn't just Dutch children, who practically run wild and scream through their childhood, who need a lesson on how to interact with other people. The whole country could stand to sit in on a few sessions.

I have not permitted myself to write on this subject earlier because I am a foreigner. It did not feel appropriate to come into another country, another culture, and another lifestyle that for the most part, I enjoy thoroughly, and judge the behavior of a society I did not build and did not grow up in--a society that would take no notice if I came or went and has done quite fine for hundreds of years without my opinions.  It is a privilege. I will always be a guest and an outsider and am quite comfortable with that status; I feel very at home with it. 

I never felt entitled to publicly express my ire.  Dutch society is marred with inconsideration that I experience every day.  For such a long time now I have been looking for the answers. It can't be actual rudeness, right? There is just some sort of cultural paradigm here that I'm blind to. It will be just like how I first thought all the crappy Dutch bicycles were so ridiculous and now life without my crappy Dutch bike makes very little sense.

But as I have infiltrated Dutch society, I've worked up enough intimate relationships to ask the question, "Are you guys really so rude or is there just something I'm not getting?"  The answer, my Dutch friends, colleagues, and acquaintances will provide is always the same, and comes with an unsolicited addendum which will be the theme of this entry: "No, we *are* rude, we hate it, and you need to learn to claim your turf."

My theory is that Dutch rudeness stems from a combination of physical height, entitlement, egalitarianism, individualism, a disdain for authority, and bad habits.  It's all about space. What's yours, what's mine, what must be shared, oh relax already, who the hell do you think you are, you can't tell me what to do, and the fact that one of the tallest populations in the world resides in a country smaller than Indiana, enduring a density unrivaled in Western Europe. It's like living in a box of toothpicks around here.  

"Claim your turf."  Dutch rudeness is expressed in two ways:  through appalling customer service and shoving. If I am not being ignored or condescended to or outright abandoned by a customer service person, I am being jostled, cut off, shoved aside, or nudged. And when I say "I"-- of course I don't mean to represent myself as a lone victim.  My curiosity over Dutch rudeness has blossomed practically into sociological research. "I" represents the collective "we" but I do not think it is right to consider myself part of the "we" that represents Dutch society as a whole.    

I shall now provide anecdotal examples of Dutch rudeness.

1. Queuing.  Remember in Zoolander when he finally learns how to turn left? Learning to stand in line would be an achievement of equal significance to the Dutch.   Should a train roll in that is luxuriating in empty seats, the dutch will cram themselves into the entrance like pouring two overloaded handfuls of marbles into a small jar. Why not just drop the marbles into the jar one by one? It is probably just as fast, certainly more elegant, and there will be no risk of a marble slipping in her high heels and falling under the tracks. Plenty of seats for all, Dutchies. And the train conductor will not let the train take off while you're standing halfway on the platform. I promise.

 2. Eye Contact.  The Dutch have this keen ability to avoid eye contact with a deft ocular choreography. If I don't see you, I don't have to ask permission to walk in front of you. If I don't see you, I can cut right in front of you.  I am a 70 year old Dutch lady. I am sitting next to you on a KLM flight headed back to Amsterdam. I am on the window seat and you are in the aisle. I will not look at you so to infer a request for permission to stand in front of you in the aisle, which you most happily would offer out of common courtesy. No, even though only four centimeters have separated us in our seats for the last several hours, I will actually maneuver my fat little granny dutch foot, thigh and hip OVER your seat as soon as you have vacated it, plant my foot firmly in front of you, shoving you back into the person standing behind you, and immobilize myself, however uncomfortably, in that position for several minutes until the line in the aisle starts to move toward the exit.  I was once a sweet and quiet little old matron and now I am to you a horrible old hag who you want to shove into the overhead luggage compartment, slamming the lid on my little old dutch granny milk-fed face with that most satisfying click.

3. Murder is Illegal and I Will Use That To My Advantage.  You have just come back from Dusseldorf. There is a derailment ahead of you and you must abandon your train and deposit yourself at a metro station and take the subway back to your destination.  The platform will be so crowded there will be news anchors there covering the story.  You are one of the first people off the train and you have lined up, in your rightful place, as first on the platform to enter the train. The crowd of people behind you is about four deep. It is freezing cold. Several metro trains will need to come by to get everyone off the platform. You are carrying a bag of breakable christmas ornaments and are worried that the crush of people will shatter them so you hold the bag on top of your head. I am a Dutch teenager and I am accompanied by four of my nasty little teenage friends. I notice that you are a patsy who has left six inches between the tip of your shoes and the painted yellow line on the platform pavement indicating you should not cross it for risk of having your face sheared off by the incoming trains. I will have the brazen audacity to stand in front of you, on that line so to ensure myself as the first to get on the train, even though hoards of people have been waiting for the train to arrive.  My backpack is touching your chest. I will ignore the feeling of you stepping on my heels.  I will take advantage of your illiteracy; you do not know how to swear at, reprimand, or insult me in my native language without sounding like Borat. I have outraged you and if you try to push me, as I so richly deserve, onto the train tracks, you will be held accountable for my death.

4. Holding the Door Swings Both Ways.  You are about to leave the gym. You see me behind you at that awkward distance where it would seem rude not to hold the door for me, yet, you will have to wait longer than what seems natural for me to pass through it. Yours is therefore an outwardly kind and considerate gesture. I am a full grown dutch man. Let me repeat...I am a man. While you are standing in position for several seconds holding the door behind you and therefore open for me, not only do I not take the door from you, I walk right through it, passed you, in front of you, never looking at you, thanking you, or acknowledging you in anyway. You are a door stop.  

5. Customer Service Does Not Equal Customer Servant.  I am the lady slathering sauce on chicken at the butcher counter, never looking up,  while you stand there for five minutes waiting to be assisted before eventually just walking away. I am the girl who works behind the counter. I am the waitress. I am the waiter.  Don't you feel foolish coming into my establishment, sitting there like some helpless lump, and expecting me to attend to your every need? I have calls to make on my cell phone. I have this other customer to help so I will not acknowledge your presence  or ask if you would mind waiting, which of course you wouldn't.  I will never EVER remember to bring you the artificial sugar you asked for with your coffee. 

6. You Are In My Way and My Way Is Predetermined.  You are just standing there. I walk by you so fast that I knock the bottle of water right out of your hand. I never even turn around to recognize what I have done, let alone slow down or even stop to pick up the bottle and apologize.  How dare you not telepathically anticipate the path in which I intend to walk and get well out of my way ahead of time?  

7.  My Accoutrement Is Me. I will constantly bump into you with my bag, my luggage, my elbow, my purse.

8. We Are All In This Together...Except for You.    You are on an international train departing from Amsterdam headed to Paris. You are sitting across from two French men who are traveling together for work. To your right is a 6'5" tall Dutch man who has sprawled out across two seats struggling to situate his gangly body in a comfortable position. The position he chooses invites a full view of the span of his crotch.  You can hear American and British English, French, Italian, and German spoken in your compartment.   As the train travels from one country to another, announcements are delivered in three languages, the order determined by the country the train is currently passing through.  We are in Belgium.   The announcements are therefore made in the order of Dutch, French, and lastly English.  A train conductor gets on the intercom to tell us we are going to have to make a train transfer in Brussels due to a technical difficulty.   A few minutes before we roll into Brussels, the train conductor gets on the intercom once more to tell us which platform we need to go to. He announces it, again, first in Dutch, then French, then English.   The compartment is silent while he runs through the announcement in Dutch.   As soon as I, as well as all my Dutch compatriots on the train hear what we need to hear, we all start talking and babbling very loudly and excitedly through the last two announcements. The French man sitting across from you SHHHH's us with all the power he can muster through his lungs and behind his teeth.  We ignore him.   All the rest of the passengers on the train are looking at each other communicating their collective disbelief and exasperation over our lack of consideration.  As the train rolls to a stop in Brussels,  I will toss my backpack in front of you on the aisle to ensure I get off the train before you do.

9. The Thighs of My Jeans Double As A Napkin.  And the floor doubles as a crumb repository.

10.  How Dare You Not Buy What I Have to Sell. You are looking to buy a house.  I am a Dutch real estate agent trying to sell you a house. You go to the house with your American expat real estate agent. You notice that the only shower is on the top floor of the house and you need to climb a ladder to get to it. The water pressure is also very weak. When you point out these issues to the Dutch real estate agent, he looks down his eye glasses at you with an expression of outward hostility and says, "Well you can't get everything in life you want can you?"

I will ask for your forgiveness in using the following analogy, for analogies are cheap. But living in Holland, when it comes to manners, is like wearing a very beautiful dress with an itchy tag that bothers you so much it totally detracts from the enjoyment of the dress.  For as much as Dutch rudeness stings on a daily basis, the Dutch, and their children, are consistently rated as some of the happiest people on the planet. One of my closest Dutch friends once said to me "We come from the mud."   It would be so awful to compare this statement to the most grotesque expression "As happy as a pig in shit"   --but here I am doing it anyway.

An arsenal of disapproval cannot combat a society that is rude upon itself and others, yet  fortified by a barrier of happiness. You cannot penetrate an attitude of "we don't care."  And it goes again back to the thing I've mentioned before, the downside of Dutch tolerance.  I don't think the Dutch need to tolerate this behavior in each other .And indeed, it is an issue that can't seem to lie flat. It is talked about, it is famed, it is asked about in polls. Maybe it is the one thing (aside from really bad food) that keeps this life from being too perfect, too relaxed, fun, and easy going.   Every society and culture has its "stuff".    I get annoyed when people cut in front of me here.  In the US I get annoyed by celebrity media and being nickled and dimed.

 Is a daily pinprick better or worse than a constant vice grip?