Recently, Baruch Labunski was in a store, waiting his turn to pay. Ahead of him, there was a “slower older lady” at the cash register.
“She was digging out change, apologizing for the delay,” he recalled. “A young man in the line yelled out that she needed to hurry up because people were waiting.”
This kind of social friction is increasingly a part of daily life in Toronto. Five years after COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, it’s clear that the rupture caused by large-scale lockdowns, collective anxiety and changes in the way we work and socialize have resulted in a fraying of polite society, one local café putting up a “Please don’t abuse our staff” sign at a time.
Businesses are noticing more rudeness
“The mindset of the public has changed to become more rude, and that has thrown many business owners off on how to handle it,” said Labunski, who works with restaurants and other public-facing businesses with his Toronto-based internet marketing firm Rank Secure. One restaurateur had a customer complain about an incorrect drink order, and the server offered to take the beverage and replace it. “The customer got angry, asking why she wouldn’t leave it on the table and still bring their preferred choice.” They left no tip.
“We’ve noticed an increase in no-shows and lateness,” said Sergio Pedemonte, a personal trainer and CEO of Your House Fitness. “Or people will reach out two minutes prior to their appointment and cancel.”
He’s also seen a notable increase in aggression, to the point where he’s created a “zero tolerance” policy toward harassment and rudeness. He now trains staff in de-escalating situations, like when a client arrived 10 minutes late and got agitated when she was told she couldn’t make up the lost time because her trainer had another client right afterward, “saying it’s unfair and raising her voice.”
Just asking on social media whether people have noticed a decline in manners in the past five years results in a wave of disquieting anecdata. Someone was cutting their nails on the GO Train; a Pilates class-goer laid hands on a stranger to physically move them out of ‘their” spot; a man blasted music on portable speakers outside a Tim Hortons so loudly that it was impossible to place an order in the drive-thru microphone. (Compounding this offence, the soundtrack was “late-era U2.”)
Friends make plans and flake at the last minute; parking lots are battlegrounds of fighting over spaces or not letting other drivers back out; pedestrians stop in the middle of a sidewalk, lost in their phone and expecting foot traffic to just flow around them.
The headphone issue
This disregard for basic civility has led Via Rail to revise its on-board announcements. Riders hear the dining car hours, how to get Wi-Fi and a request that “headphones be used with all electronic devices to avoid disturbing other passengers.” (A lively complaint thread on the official Via Rail Reddit indicates some take this as a suggestion, rather than a rule.)
Marisa Young noticed similar behaviour on a recent flight. “Two separate people around me were watching videos on their phone, unmuted, without headphones. I couldn’t believe it! They had no consideration for the other passengers,” she said. “I brought this incident up to my partner afterward, who said people were doing the same at his gym.”
She’s also noticed more thoughtless and aggressive drivers on the road, adding, “this might be a product of workers having to return to the workplace against their will, and feeling angry about their commute.”
Young has a professional interest in what’s happening: She’s a professor of sociology at McMaster University with an interest in social cohesion and well-being. She said the shift in norms has been a hot topic among sociologists, with two patterns emerging: “Reduced trust in others, and increased social isolation — both of which were amplified during and since the pandemic.”
The youth manners gap
“We are seeing increased social isolation across many cohorts, with significant reports among younger individuals compared to in the past,” Young said. “Fewer people are engaging in local organizations or volunteering.” With that comes “increased mistrust of one’s neighbours, which might result in some of the changing behaviours observed in manners and social exchanges.”
For many young people, there is a knowledge gap around manners, since they missed out on formative years of immersion in school and office settings. It’s why Los Angeles-based etiquette coach Jules Hirst teaches seminars for college students where she covers seemingly basic things like how to make small talk and that it’s rude to speak to the person next to you while someone is presenting.
But there are also plenty of cases where people know something is impolite, and do it anyway. Hirst recently went to a magic show where the audience was asked not to use flash when taking pictures. “But people still had their flash on,” she said. “At first you think, ‘Oh, maybe they don’t know,’ but at some point, you know they know it’s on. Some people adopt the attitude of, ‘That rule is not for me, it’s for you all.’”
She thinks this attitude can be partly traced back to COVID lockdowns. “When the doors were opened, we went for it. We were never going to be told that we can’t enjoy life outside our houses again,” she said. “However, you have to remember that there are other people out there.”
Bad behaviour goes on tour
This phenomenon has been noted across the world. Consider the global spate of concertgoers throwing objects onto the stage while artists are performing, or the rise in hecklers at comedy shows. (There was a recent furor over U.K. comedian Peter Kay ejecting two hecklers, one who kept shouting “garlic bread,” from an arena show in Manchester last month.) In Japan, a place known for extreme politeness, an ordinance was enacted last year in Tokyo to tackle a growing problem of customer harassment or “kasuhara.”
“The pandemic certainly changed how we interact in social spaces,” said Howard Ramos, chair of sociology at Western University. “We had at least a year where we were really limited in terms of going to the workplace, going to schools, going on public transit, and we see that through that disruption we lost our muscle memory of interaction.”
Repairing social rifts
But lockdowns aren’t the only factor at play. Ramos cites mismatched behavioural expectations due to rapid population growth in Canada, and Toronto in particular. “We’ve seen an unprecedented number of temporary residents arrive to the country, which adds people who are adapting and learning what it is to be Torontonian and navigate Canadian norms, and bringing with them new norms.”
He also points to the “fragmentation of social media, and more people speaking in echo chambers,” which means we’re becoming less comfortable with encountering opposing views. If you mostly communicate online with people who agree with you — and who get their clicks by demeaning those who don’t — you might well become more likely to bristle at being told, no, you can’t actually leave your theatre seat and come back in again during a live performance.
So how do we repair this growing rift? By encouraging social cohesion at all levels, Young believes. “There must be accessible and affordable social spaces for people to gather and connect,” she said. “We have to encourage civic engagement and volunteering. Encouraging people to expand their social networks through these activities will help build trust in communities.”
Ramos would like to see more government investment in arts and culture programs like Canadian Heritage, which announced plans to “realize $64 million in savings” to its grants program by 2026-27. “When you have more points of sharing commonality, you’re more likely to see a diversity of opinions and views,” he said, “and be more open and more tolerant.”
In the meantime, for all of us out there on the trains and in the streets, Hirst points back to the Golden Rule of manners as a guiding principle: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
