ATLANTA — Last week, during a routine medical appointment at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, I saw signs I had never seen before.
“Attention! Our employees have the right to be treated with dignity and respect at all times. They should be able to do their jobs without being physically or verbally abused. Most people respect this. Thank you for being one of them.”
It is a literal sign of the times.
In my conversations with friends and sometimes strangers, everyone it seems is attuned to the rising level of rudeness. In Target, I watched a woman cut the line, then argue with anyone who told her to move to the rear. At the hair salon, a woman yelled, cursed and staged a sit-in because the colorist did not have the brand of hair color she likes. Recently, a Douglasville woman was arrested after allegedly striking a ticket agent in the face at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Frontline workers, who just years ago were heralded as America’s heroes, have since become the target of our anxieties and fears, according to Christine Porath, who has studied incivility for more than 20 years. “This kind of incivility leads to negative outcomes not only for the workers who experience it directly but also those who witness it — all of which harms businesses and society,” wrote Porath last year in the Harvard Business Review.
Porath found that 76 percent of respondents surveyed in 25 industries across the globe said they experienced incivility at least once a month. Those levels have risen steadily since 2012, which debunks the belief that it all began with the pandemic.
Representatives from Piedmont did not confirm any specific events, but they did send a statement in response to my inquiry.
“Piedmont exists to make a positive difference in every life we touch – the only way we can deliver on that promise is to ensure we are a place where all are welcome and safe, team members and patients alike. The signs represent just one of many efforts we are making to support our team members and remind patients and visitors to treat our team with kindness and respect.”
While the pandemic may have done its part to exacerbate incivility, Porath said the main drivers of the upward trend in rudeness are stress, negative emotions, isolation, technology and lack of self-awareness. Americans have also pointed to the bad behavior of politicians in fueling the overall decline in kindness.
In January, the Georgia Municipal Association launched the “Embrace Civility “initiative to encourage elected officials in the state to treat each other with respect to set an example for the community.
But if we believe the words of the late Andrew Breitbart, politics is downstream from culture.
This level of incivility, the kind that results in verbal and physical abuse of restaurant workers, airline ticket agents or fellow shoppers in the grocery store, is likely fueled by fear, said Kevin Morton, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Marietta with a specialty in anger management.
“Fear is a big thing for a lot of people,” Morton said. When people are afraid — perhaps of what the future holds — they build defenses and say they are protecting themselves.
Morton explains to his clients the anger iceberg, where just below the surface lurks things like fear, frustration, hurt, depression, loneliness and unresolved trauma.
“All of these things manifest in public, in relationships, in the grocery store,” Morton said. “It becomes normalized.”
Behaving in a less than civil manner once could be considered a mistake. Doing it over and over again is a choice. While the majority of Americans agree civility has declined, a similar percentage also said they behave in a civil manner. That indicates we aren’t spending a lot of time on self-reflection.
We can’t expect politicians to behave well if we continue to support them when they don’t. We can’t expect children to behave well if we don’t teach them how.
“We have to be the change agents,” Morton said. “We have to be the adults in the room.”
